Abstract
Background
High mortality risk in heart failure (HF) is related to repeat HF hospitalizations but also individual patient characteristics.
Purpose
To evaluate the impact of HF re-/hospitalizations and patient-related factors (sex, HF etiology, age, comorbidity) on all-cause mortality.
Methods
Our study represents one of the most extensive retrospective cohort analyses consisting of 1,686,861 adult Polish HF patients who presented into public health system in years 2013–2018. It is a part of a nationwide National Health Fund registry covering out- and in-patient data for the entire Polish population (38,495,659 in 2013) since 2009. HF hospitalizations were extracted using ICD-10 coding, whereas the comorbidity was evaluated by means of Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI).
Results
In years 2013–2018 the absolute number of HF hospitalizations in Poland grew by 33% to 264,808 in 2018, whereas the number of rehospitalizations increased 1.5-fold to reach 137,708 in 2018.
In fact, nearly half of HF patients (n=817,432; 48.5%) experienced at least one hospitalization, while 15.4% (n=259,868) were rehospitalized during the study period. After initial hospitalization the readmission rate due to HF/all circulatory diseases at 30, 60, 180, 360, and 720 days was 10.4%/15.1%, 21.2%/28.3%, 43.9%/52.8%, 62%/70.4%, and 81%/87%, respectively.
As compared to patients who were hospitalized just once, those who underwent at least one rehospitalization were more often female (p<0.001), slightly older (p<0.001), and with higher burden of comorbidities based on CCI (p<0.001).
Patient survival was highly dependent on hospitalization frequency (Fig. 1). Mean survival rate at day 720 was 66.4%, 59.8%, 54.9%, 51%, and 43.9% for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and ≥5th hospitalization, respectively.
After adjusting for age, sex, etiology (ischemic/non-ischemic) and CCI using a multivariate stratified Cox regression model, the estimated hazard ratios (HR) for all-cause mortality amounted to 1.22 (95% CI: 1.21–1.23, p<0.001) for 2nd, 1.4 (95% CI: 1.39–1.42, p<0.001) for 3rd, 1.58 (95% CI: 1.56–1.6, p<0.001) for 4th, and 1.97 (95% CI: 1.95–1.98 p<0.001) for 5th and subsequent hospitalizations, as compared to the first hospitalization.
Conclusions
Hospitalization rate in Poland is alarmingly high. Repeat HF hospitalizations strongly predict mortality rate for HF patients even after adjustment for age, sex, etiology, and comorbidity burden.
Figure 1. Kaplan-Meier for survival post hosp.
Funding Acknowledgement
Type of funding source: Public grant(s) – EU funding. Main funding source(s): The project is co-financed by the European Union from the European Social Fund under the Operational Programme Knowledge Education Development and it is being carried out by the Analyses and Strategies Department of the Polish Ministry of Health.
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