Long-term prognostic impact of beta-blockers in patients with Takotsubo syndrome: Results from the RETAKO Registry.

BACKGROUND: No evidence-based therapy has yet been established for Takotsubo syndrome (TTS). Given the putative harmful effects of catecholamines in patients with TTS, beta-blockers may potentially decrease the intensity of the detrimental cardiac effects in those patients. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of beta-blocker therapy on long-term mortality and TTS recurrence. METHODS: The cohort study used the national Spanish Registry on TakoTsubo Syndrome (RETAKO). A total of 970 TTS post-discharge survivors, without pheochromocytoma, left ventricular outflow tract obstruction, sustained ventricular arrhythmias, and significant bradyarrhythmias, between January 1, 2003, and July 31, 2018, were assessed. Cox regression analysis and inverse probability weighting (IPW) propensity score analysis were used to evaluate the association between beta-blocker therapy and survival free of TTS recurrence. RESULTS: From 970 TTS patients, 582 (60.0%) received beta-blockers. During a mean follow-up of 2.5±3.3 years, there were 87 deaths (3.6 per 100 patients/year) and 29 TTS recurrences (1.2 per 100 patient/year). There was no significant difference in follow-up mortality or TTS recurrence in unadjusted and adjusted Cox analysis (hazard ratio [HR] 0.86, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.59-1.27, and 0.95, 95% CI 0.57-1.13, respectively). After weighting and adjusting by IPW, differences in one-year survival free of TTS recurrence between patients treated and untreated with beta-blockers were not found (average treatment effect -0.01, 95% CI -0.07 to 0.04; p=0.621). CONCLUSIONS: In this observational nationwide study from Spain, there was no significant association between beta-blocker therapy and follow-up survival free of TTS recurrence.

Predictive Model and Risk Score for In-Hospital Mortality in Patients with All-Cause Cardiogenic Shock.

Cardiogenic shock (CS) is a condition associated with high morbidity and mortality. Our study aimed to perform a risk score for in-hospital mortality that allows for stratifying the risk of death in patients with CS.This is a retrospective analysis, which included 135 patients from a Spanish university hospital between 2011 and 2020. The Santiago Shock Score (S3) was created using clinical, analytical, and echocardiographic variables obtained at the time of admission.The in-hospital mortality rate was 41.5%, and acute coronary syndrome (ACS) was the responsible cause of shock in 60.7% of patients. Mitral regurgitation grade III-IV, age, ACS etiology, NT-proBNP, blood hemoglobin, and lactate at admission were included in the score. The S3 had good accuracy for predicting in-hospital mortality area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) 0.85 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.78-0.90), higher than the AUC of the CardShock score, which was 0.74 (95% CI 0.66-0.83). Predictive power in a cohort of 131 patients with profound CS was similar to that of CardShock with an AUC of 0.601 (95% CI 0.496-0.706) versus an AUC of 0.558 (95% CI 0.453-0.664). Three risk categories were created according to the S3: low (scores 0-6), intermediate (scores 7-10), and high (scores 11-16) risks, with an observed mortality of 12.9%, 49.1%, and 87.5% respectively (P < 0.001).The S3 score had excellent predictive power for in-hospital mortality in patients with nonprofound CS. It could aid the initial risk stratification of patients and thus, guide treatment and clinical decision making in patients with CS.

Development and external validation of a post-discharge bleeding risk score in patients with acute coronary syndrome: The BleeMACS score.

BACKGROUND: Accurate 1-year bleeding risk estimation after hospital discharge for acute coronary syndrome (ACS) may help clinicians guide the type and duration of antithrombotic therapy. Currently there are no predictive models for this purpose. The aim of this study was to derive and validate a simple clinical tool for bedside risk estimation of 1-year post-discharge serious bleeding in ACS patients. METHODS: The risk score was derived and internally validated in the BleeMACS (Bleeding complications in a Multicenter registry of patients discharged with diagnosis of Acute Coronary Syndrome) registry, an observational international registry involving 15,401 patients surviving admission for ACS and undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) from 2003 to 2014, engaging 15 hospitals from 10 countries located in America, Europe and Asia. External validation was conducted in the SWEDEHEART population, with 96,239 ACS patients underwent PCI and 93,150 without PCI. RESULTS: Seven independent predictors of bleeding were identified and included in the BleeMACS score: age, hypertension, vascular disease, history of bleeding, malignancy, creatinine and hemoglobin. The BleeMACS risk score exhibited a C-statistic value of 0.71 (95% CI 0.68-0.74) in the derivation cohort and 0.72 (95% CI 0.67-0.76) in the internal validation sample. In the SWEDEHEART external validation cohort, the C-statistic was 0.65 (95% CI 0.64-0.66) for PCI patients and 0.63 (95% CI 0.62-0.64) for non-PCI patients. The calibration was excellent in the derivation and validation cohorts. CONCLUSIONS: The BleeMACS bleeding risk score is a simple tool useful for identifying those ACS patients at higher risk of serious 1-year post-discharge bleeding. ClinicalTrials.govIdentifier: NCT02466854.

Acute pulmonary edema in patients with decompensated heart failure. Role of underlying cardiopathy on the prognosis.

AIMS: To investigate the impact of acute pulmonary edema (APE) on the prognosis of patients hospitalized with congestive heart failure (CHF) and if the underlying cardiopathy influences the survival of these patients. METHOD AND RESULTS: All patients admitted to the cardiology department of a tertiary hospital with CHF between 1991 and 2002 were included in the present study. APE was diagnosed in 176 of 1659 patients. 60.2% of them were of ischaemic etiology, 48.6% and 42.9% of hypertensive and valvular origin, respectively. Survival analysis carried out in April 2003 has shown that APE patients have higher mortality rates, with a median survival of 3.1 years as against 4.8 years. This difference was due only to the behaviour of patients with ischaemic CHF as among patients with non-ischaemic CHF, the difference in median survival between patients with and without APE was insignificant. Within the APE group the survival of ischaemic patients was lower than that of non-ischaemic (median survival of 2.3 years vs 4.5 years, respectively). The difference was more pronounced between APE patients with CHF of ischaemic and hypertensive origin (median survival of 5.6 years for the latter). Among patients without APE, there was no significant difference between different etiological groups. CONCLUSION: In this study we found that the survival time of CHF patients is significantly shortened by the concurrence of APE and ischaemic etiology but not by either of these factors without the other.

The death rate among hospitalized heart failure patients with normal and depressed left ventricular ejection fraction in the year following discharge: evolution over a 10-year period.

AIMS: To investigate whether changes in clinical characteristics and treatment strategies between 1991 and 2001 have had an impact on the survival of patients hospitalized with congestive heart failure (CHF) and whether those with normal left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF> or =50%) differ in this respect from those with depressed LVEF. METHODS AND RESULTS: We studied 1482 patients who had been admitted to the Cardiology Service of a tertiary Spanish hospital in the last 10 years with CHF. Among the 1110 for whom LVEF was evaluated, the prevalence of normal LVEF rose from 37% in the period 1991-96 (Period 1) to 47% in the period 2000-2001 (Period 3). The intensity of both diagnostic and therapeutic measures also increased during this 10-year period. The 1-year survival rate remained virtually unchanged in the whole group of patients, being 82, 84, and 82% in Periods 1, 2 (1997-99), and 3, respectively, even though the prognosis of patients with depressed LVEF (<50%) improved significantly, with 1-year survival rates of 76, 77, and 84% in Periods 1, 2, and 3, respectively; the normal LVEF group had decreasing 1-year survival rates of 88, 86, and 81% in Periods 1, 2, and 3, respectively, although the increased risk of death was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: Although in our centre the death rate among hospitalized CHF patients with depressed LVEF during the first year after discharge has tended to fall over the past 10 years, application of current clinical guidelines has led to no such decrease for patients with normal LVEF. This situation points to a need to reconsider the diagnostic and therapeutic strategy to be employed with this latter group of patients.