Mortality and cardiovascular morbidity within 30 days of discharge following acute coronary syndrome in a contemporary European cohort of patients: How can early risk prediction be improved? The six-month GRACE risk score.

OBJECTIVES: Given the increasing focus on early mortality and readmission rates among patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS), this study was designed to evaluate the accuracy of the GRACE risk score for identifying patients at high risk of 30-day post-discharge mortality and cardiovascular readmission. METHODS: This was a retrospective study carried out in a single center with 4229 ACS patients discharged between 2004 and 2010. The study endpoint was the combination of 30-day post-discharge mortality and readmission due to reinfarction, heart failure or stroke. RESULTS: One hundred and fourteen patients had 30-day events: 0.7% mortality, 1% reinfarction, 1.3% heart failure, and 0.2% stroke. After multivariate analysis, the six-month GRACE risk score was associated with an increased risk of 30-day events (HR 1.03, 95% CI 1.02-1.04; p<0.001), demonstrating good discrimination (C-statistic: 0.79 ± 0.02) and optimal fit (Hosmer-Lemeshow p=0.83). The sensitivity and specificity were adequate (78.1% and 63.3%, respectively), and negative predictive value was excellent (99.1%). In separate analyses for each event of interest (all-cause mortality, reinfarction, heart failure and stroke), assessment of the six-month GRACE risk score also demonstrated good discrimination and fit, as well as adequate predictive values. CONCLUSIONS: The six-month GRACE risk score is a useful tool to predict 30-day post-discharge death and early cardiovascular readmission. Clinicians may find it simple to use with the online and mobile app score calculator and applicable to clinical daily practice.

Risk stratification for the development of heart failure after acute coronary syndrome at the time of hospital discharge: Predictive ability of GRACE risk score.

BACKGROUND: Despite encouraging declines in the incidence of heart failure (HF) complicating acute coronary syndrome (ACS), it remains a common problem with high mortality. Being able to identify patients at high risk of HF after ACS would have great clinical and economic impact. With this study, we assessed the usefulness of the GRACE score to predict HF after an ACS. METHODS: We studied 4137 consecutive patients discharged with diagnosis of ACS. We analyzed HF incidence, timing, and association with the follow-up mortality. Cox proportional hazards modeling was performed to assess the accuracy of the GRACE risk score to predict HF admissions in follow-up (median 3.1 years). RESULTS: A total of 433 patients (10.5%) developed HF. GRACE score was an independent predictor of HF after ACS [hazard ratio (HR) 1.02, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.01-1.03, p<0.001]. A risk gradient for the development of HF with GRACE risk score was shown: high- and moderate-GRACE risk groups have been linked to a sixfold and twofold increased risk of HF. This risk gradient was maintained in patients with and without prior history of HF, in ST elevation myocardial infarction and non-ST elevation myocardial infarction groups, and in patients with depressed and preserved left ventricular ejection fraction. The development of HF was associated with high mortality (54.5% vs 13.4%; HR=4.48; 95% CI: 3.84-5.24; p<0.001). After adjusting for GRACE risk score, HF development resulted as an independent predictor of mortality. CONCLUSION: GRACE risk score has been shown to provide clinically relevant stratification of follow-up HF admission risk at the time of hospital discharge in patients with ACS.

Is 6-month GRACE risk score a useful tool to predict stroke after an acute coronary syndrome?

OBJECTIVES: The risk of stroke after an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) has increased. The aim of this study was to do a comparative validation of the 6-month GRACE (Global Registry of Acute Coronary Events) risk score and CH2DS2VASc risk score to predict the risk of post-ACS ischaemic stroke. METHODS: This was a retrospective study carried out in a single centre with 4229 patients with ACS discharged between 2004 and 2010 (66.9±12.8 years, 27.9% women, 64.2% underwent percutaneous coronary intervention). The primary end point is the occurrence of an ischaemic stroke during follow-up (median 4.6 years, IQR 2.7-7.1 years). RESULTS: 184 (4.4%) patients developed an ischaemic stroke; 153 (83.2%) had sinus rhythm and 31 (16.9%) had atrial fibrillation. Patients with stroke were older, with higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, previous stroke and previous coronary artery disease. The HR for CHA2DS2VASc was 1.36 (95% CI, 1.27 to 1.48, p<0.001) and for GRACE, HR was 1.02(95% CI, 1.01 to 1.03, p<0.001). Both risk scores show adequate discriminative ability (c-index 0.63±0.02 and 0.60±0.02 for CHA2DS2VASc and GRACE, respectively). In the reclassification method there was no difference (Net Reclassification Improvement 1.98%, p=0.69). Comparing moderate-risk/high-risk patients with low-risk patients, both risk scores showed very high negative predictive value (98.5% for CHA2DS2VASc, 98.1% for GRACE). The sensitivity of CHA2DS2VASc score was higher than the GRACE risk score (95.1% vs 87.0%), whereas specificity was lower (14.4% vs 30.2%). CONCLUSIONS: The 6-month GRACE model is a clinical risk score that facilitates the identification of individual patients who are at high risk of ischaemic stroke after ACS discharge.

Dosing of iodinated contrast volume: a new simple algorithm to stratify the risk of contrast-induced nephropathy in patients with acute coronary syndrome.

OBJECTIVES AND BACKGROUND: Previous studies on contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN) have identified contrast volume (CV) as a risk factor. The aim of our research was to define the safe dose of contrast media based on absolute CV, maximum allowable contrast dose (MACD) and estimated glomerular filtrate rate (eGFR). METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 940 consecutive patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) were enrolled. Fifty-four patients developed CIN. MACD was defined as 5*body weight/serum creatinine. When using a CV higher than MACD, CIN-risk was increased 19-fold (OR 9.810-39.307, P < 0.001). For the CV/eGFR ratio, we found that for every increase of one-tenth, CIN-risk increased by 4.9% (OR 1.037-1.061, P < 0.001). The discriminative ability of CV (C statistic = 0.626 ± 0.038) was significantly lower than for the CV/MACD (C statistic = 0.782 ± 0.036, P = 0.003) and CV/eGFR (C statistics: 0.796 ± 0.033 for MDRD-4, 0.796 ± 0.034 for Cockcroft-Gault, and 0.803 ± 0.033 for CKD-EPI; P < 0.001). There were no differences in the discriminative ability to predict CIN between the three eGFR equations. The combination of CV/MACD and CV/eGFR in a single protocol increases the positive predictive value of the Mehran risk score (40.7% vs. 8.8%) with the same sensitivity (90.7% vs. 83.3%). High doses of relative CV (CV/MACD and CV/eGFR) were also significantly associated with higher in-hospital mortality, reinfarction, and heart failure. CONCLUSIONS: A sequential protocol based on CV/MACD and CV/eGFR appropriately identified those ACS patients who developed CIN, with predictive values similar to a Mehran score, reducing the false positive rate. It is also useful to predict risk of in-hospital cardiac events regardless of GRACE score.