My Adventures with Heart Failure

Blood pressure may help predict heart failure risk
Nov 20 (HealthCentersOnline) - A simple vital sign taken during admission to the hospital may be able to predict whether a patient's heart failure will worsen, according to a recent study.
Heart failure is a chronic condition in which at least one chamber of the heart is not pumping well enough to meet the body's needs. This leads to congestion in the lungs or pulmonary blood vessels and may cause fluid backup or swelling in the lungs, legs and ankles.

Blood pressure is a measure of the force, or tension, of the blood against the walls of the arteries. The higher this measurement, the higher the workload and strain on the heart. Blood pressure is expressed as systolic pressure over diastolic pressure.

Researchers from several universities have found that heart failure patients with a higher systolic blood pressure appear to have a lower risk of dying when compared to heart failure patients with lower systolic blood pressure. The study also found that a lower systolic blood pressure in a heart failure patient may indicate advanced disease as well as a poorer prognosis.

For the study, the researchers analyzed patient data from a large heart failure patient registry known as the Organized Program to Initiate Lifesaving Treatment in Hospitalized Patients with Heart Failure (OPTIMIZE-HF). This registry includes data gathered from some 48,612 heart failure patients seen at 259 U.S. hospitals.

After studying the data, the researchers found that there was a 7.2 percent mortality rate for heart failure patients with systolic pressure of less than 120 mmHg, while heart failure patients with pressures between 120 and 139 mmHg (considered the normal range) had a 3.6 percent mortality rate. Patients who had systolic pressures between 140 and 161 mmHg had a 2.5 percent mortality rate and patients with high systolic pressures over 161 mmHg had a 1.7 percent mortality rate.

Because a patient's blood pressure reading is a vital sign that is always taken during admission to the hospital, the researchers are confident that this new research may lead to a simple way to identify those patients most at risk for worsening.

"Systolic blood pressure taken at hospital admission was a strong independent predictor of mortality and morbidity in this large, representative heart failure patient population. We hope the findings may help clinicians more effectively stratify risk and offer more targeted treatments based on a patient's systolic blood pressure level," explained Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, The Eliot Corday Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine and Science, principal investigator and director, Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center, in a recent press release. The results of the study were published in the November 8 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

# posted by Kelly : 11:38 PM