Introduction:
Identifying hospitalized patients at a high risk for worse long-term clinical outcomes following acute heart failure (AHF) is important. However, limited data regarding influence of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and its treatment by positive airway pressure (PAP) on post-discharge clinical outcomes in hospitalized patients following AHF are available.
Hypothesis:
Presence of SDB may be associated with worse long-term clinical outcomes, which may be reversible by PAP therapy in patients with AHF. The aim of this study is to investigate relationship between SDB, its treatment by PAP and long-term clinical outcomes.
Methods:
After the initial improvement of AHF, overnight polysomnography was performed on consecutive hospitalized patients whose left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction ≤45% between May 2012 and April 2018. In the present study, SDB was defined as an apnea-hypopnea index ≥15. Patients with SDB were subdivided as those with or without PAP treatment. The incidence of deaths and re-hospitalizations due to exacerbation of heart failure until April 2019 were assessed by stepwise multivariable Cox proportional model.
Results:
Overall, 241 patients were enrolled. Among them, 73% had SDB and 29% were initiated into PAP. At a median follow-up of 1.7 years, 89 patients had clinical events (36.9%). In the stepwise multivariable analysis, SDB was associated with increased risk of clinical events (hazard ratio [HR], 2.20; P=0.007). Among SDB patients, stepwise multivariable analysis showed that PAP treatment was associated with reduced risk of clinical events (HR 0.45; P=0.022).
Conclusions:
In hospitalized patients following AHF, presence of SDB was associated with worse long-term clinical outcomes, which may be reversible by PAP therapy. Thus, following AHF, hospitalized patients with LV systolic dysfunction should be evaluated whether they have SDB and considered for SDB treatment before discharge.
Sleep disordered breathing and post-discharge mortality in patients with acute heart failure
