BACKGROUD Acute heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is a common but poorly studied cause of hospital admissions among nonagenarians. This study aimed to evaluate predictors of thirty-day readmission, in-hospital mortality, length of stay, and hospital charges in nonagenarians hospitalized with acute HFpEF.
METHODS Patients hospitalized between January 2016 and December 2018 with a primary diagnosis of diastolic heart failure were identified using ICD-10 within the Nationwide Readmission Database. We excluded patients who died in index admission, and discharged in December each year to allow thirty-day follow-up. Univariate regression was performed on each variable. Variables with P-value < 0.2 were included in the multivariate regression model.
RESULTS From a total of 45,393 index admissions, 43,646 patients (96.2%) survived to discharge. A total of 7,437 patients (15.6%) had a thirty-day readmission. Mean cost of readmission was 43,265 United States dollars (USD) per patient. Significant predictors of thirty-day readmission were chronic kidney disease stage III or higher adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 1.20, 95% CI: 1.07−1.34, P = 0.002 and diabetes mellitus (aOR = 1.18, 95% CI: 1.07−1.29, P = 0.001). Meanwhile, female (aOR = 0.90, 95% CI: 0.82−0.99, P = 0.028) and palliative care encounter (aOR = 0.27, 95% CI: 0.21−0.34, P < 0.001) were associated with lower odds of readmission. Cardiac arrhythmia (aOR = 1.46, 95% CI: 1.11−1.93, P = 0.007) and aortic stenosis (aOR = 1.36, 95% CI: 1.05−1.76, P = 0.020) were amongst predictors of in-hospital mortality.
CONCLUSIONS In nonagenarians hospitalized with acute HFpEF, thirty-day readmission is common and costly. Chronic comorbidities predict poor outcomes. Further strategies need to be developed to improve the quality of care and prevent the poor outcome in nonagenarians.
DownLoad: