Background:
While acute hypertensive response (AHR) predicts worse outcome in intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), the INTERACT-2 trial recently failed to definitively demonstrate a major benefit of intensive blood pressure reduction on these patients. A possible explanation is that the detrimental effect of AHR on outcome may differ among ICH patients with and without previous chronic hypertension.
Objective:
to explore whether the prognosis of patients with AHR during the acute phase of ICH differs according to the presence or absence of left ventricle hypertrophy (LVH), which is a marker of chronic hypertensive organ damage.
Method:
we performed a retrospective analysis of a prospective cohort of patients with primary ICH presenting to an academic hospital between January/2000 and December/2012 with age > 18 years, who had a transthoracic echocardiogram available. LVH was defined according to Penn convention. AHR was defined as systolic blood pressure > 180 mmHg on admission. Mantel-Haenszel test was initially used to assess if LVH status influenced the effect of AHR on mortality. For subsequent analyses, ICH patients were divided in 3 groups: without AHR (reference); AHR without LVH; AHR with LVH. A multivariate logistic regression model was then used to identify independent predictors of mortality at 30-days.
Results:
430 patients met inclusion criteria. AHR was present in 196 (46.6%), LVH was present in 233 (54.2%); 30-day mortality was 15.6%. On Mantel-Haenszel test, we found a trend (p=0.09) suggesting that absence of LVH increased AHR effect on mortality (OR:1.64; 95% CI: 0.95-2.8; p=0.07). On multivariate analysis, patients with AHR without LVH had significantly higher mortality (OR: 2.65; 95%CI: 1.15 to 6.1; p=0.022) when compared to patients without AHR, after adjusting for baseline characteristics. There was only a trend towards increased mortality in the group of patients with AHR and LVH (OR:2.22; 95% CI: 0.99-5.0; p=0.053).
Conclusions:
Patients without chronic hypertension appear to be more susceptible to the detrimental effects of AHR during the acute phase of ICH. Stratification of patients with ICH may help to identify those that will have greater benefit with intensive blood pressure reduction in the acute phase of ICH.
Heart Failure Prevention in Older Patients Using Intensive Blood Pressure Reduction
