Recent Patient Characteristics and Medications at Admission and Discharge in Hospitalized Patients With Heart Failure

Comparable effect of tolvaptan in heart failure patients with preserved or reduced ejection fraction

Background: It is unclear that the difference in efficacy of tolvaptan (TLV) on the length of hospital stay for both heart failure (HF) preserved ejection fraction (EF) (HFpEF) and reduced EF (HFrEF) patients.Methods: We investigated 369 patients who were hospitalized with HF from February 2011 to June 2016 and initiated TLV. Patients who died in hospital, transferred hospital or clinical scenario 4 or 5 were excluded. Finally, we analyzed 108 patients with HFpEF and 96 patients with HFrEF. We evaluated the relationship between the length of hospital stay and the date of TLV initiation. Moreover, we compared the early use (within the median) and delayed use (the median or later) of TLV.Results: The date of TLV initiation was statistically associated with the length of hospital stay in both HFpEF and HFrEF (HFpEF: r = 0.625, P < 0.001, HFrEF: r = 0.618, P < 0.001). In HFpEF, the length of hospital stay in delayed use group was significantly longer than the early use group (22.2 ± 10.7 days and 38.1 ± 22.6 days, P < 0.001). The result was similar in HFrEF (22.0 ± 15.0 days and 32.1 ± 22.0 days, P = 0.008). On the other hand, there were no statistically significant differences in the length of hospital stay after initiation of TLV in both HFpEF and HFrEF. Other findings (including the severity of HF) were similar between the early use group and the delayed group in HFpEF and HFrEF.Conclusions: The time until TLV initiation after hospitalization was related to the length of hospital stay in HFpEF and HFrEF patients.

Mortality after admission for heart failure in the UK compared with Japan

Objective

Mortality amongst patients hospitalised for heart failure (HHF) in Western and Asian countries may differ, but this has not been investigated using individual patient-level data (IPLD). We sought to remedy this through rigorous statistical analysis of HHF registries and variable selection from a systematic literature review.

Methods and results

IPLD from registries of HHF in Japan (n=3781) and the UK (n=894) were obtained. A systematic literature review identified 23 models for predicting outcome of HHF. Five variables appearing in 10 or more reports were strongly related to prognosis (systolic blood pressure, serum sodium concentration, age, blood urea nitrogen and creatinine). To compare mortality in the UK and Japan, variables were imputed in a propensity model using inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) and IPTW with logistic regression (doubly robust IPTW). Overall, patients in the UK were sicker and in-patient and post-discharge mortalities were greater, suggesting that the threshold for hospital admission was higher. Covariate-adjusted in-hospital mortality was similar in the UK and Japan (IPTW OR: 1.14, 95% CI 0.70 to 1.86), but 180-day postdischarge mortality was substantially higher in the UK (doubly robust IPTW OR: 2.33, 95% CI 1.58 to 3.43).

Conclusions

Despite robust methods to adjust for differences in patient characteristics and disease severity, HHF patients in the UK have roughly twice the mortality at 180 days compared with those in Japan. Similar analyses should be done using other data sets and in other countries to determine the consistency of these findings and identify factors that might inform healthcare policy and improve outcomes.