Background:
Comorbidities are associated with poor clinical outcome in heart failure patients. AHEAD (A: atrial fibrillation; H: hemoglobin; E: elderly; A: abnormal renal parameters; D: diabetes mellitus) score has been related to clinical outcomes in patients with acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF). On the other hand, systemic inflammation plays a critical role in the outcomes of heart failure. Malnutrition is also associated with poor outcome in heart failure patients. It has been recently reported that advanced lung cancer inflammation index (ALI), which is calculated as body mass index х serum albumin / neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio, is an independent prognostic marker in several types of cancer. We sought to investigate the prognostic value of the combination of AHEAD score and ALI in ADHF patients.
Methods and Results:
We studied 263 patients admitted for ADHF and discharged with survival. At the discharge, we obtained ALI and AHEAD score (range 0-5, atrial fibrillation, hemoglobin <13 mg/dL for men and 12 mg/dL for women, age >70 years, creatinine >130 μmol/L, and diabetes mellitus). During a follow-up period of 5.0±4.2 yrs, 67 patients had cardiovascular death (CVD). At multivariate Cox analysis, AHEAD score and ALI were significantly independently associated with CVD, independently of prior heart failure hospitalization, systolic blood pressure and serum sodium level. The patients with both greater AHEAD score (≥median value=3) and lower ALI (≤median value=42.3) had a significantly increased risk of CVD than those with either and none of them (45% vs 24% vs 13%, p<0.0001, respectively).
Conclusion:
ALI would provide the additional long-term prognostic information to AHEAD score in patients with ADHF.
Early and long‐term outcomes of decompensated heart failure patients in a tertiary‐care centre in India
