ABSTRACT
The implementation of long-term parenteral nutrition (PN) often requires the placement of central venous access, a procedure that carries a considerable risk of catheter-related venous thrombosis (CRT). The occurrence of CRT represents a major event in the natural history of patients in PN since it can lead to central venous access loss and PN failure. Despite the importance of this topic in clinical nutrition, the prevention and treatment of CRT in PN represents one of the "gray areas" of the literature of the presence of few randomized controlled clinical trials and the generally low level of evidence of published scientific papers. Through a narrative review of the literature and a Delphi consensus, the Italian Society of Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (SINuC) aimed to collect some practical recommendations regarding the current state-of-the-art in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of CRT in patients undergoing long-term PN.
ABSTRACT
Background and Objectives: Elderly patients affected by acute heart failure (AHF) often show different patterns of comorbidities. In this paper, we aimed to evaluate how chronic comorbidities cluster and which pattern of comorbidities is more strongly related to in-hospital death in AHF. Materials and Methods: All patients admitted for AHF to an Internal Medicine Department (01/2015−01/2019) were retrospectively evaluated; the main outcome of this study was in-hospital death during an admission for AHF; age, sex, the Charlson comorbidity index (CCI), and 17 different chronic pathologies were investigated; the association between the comorbidities was studied with Pearson's bivariate test, considering a level of p ≤ 0.10 significant, and considering p < 0.05 strongly significant. Thus, we identified the clusters of comorbidities associated with the main outcome and tested the CCI and each cluster against in-hospital death with logistic regression analysis, assessing the accuracy of the prediction with ROC curve analysis. Results: A total of 459 consecutive patients (age: 83.9 ± 8.02 years; males: 56.6%). A total of 55 (12%) subjects reached the main outcome; the CCI and 16 clusters of comorbidities emerged as being associated with in-hospital death from AHF. Of these, CCI and six clusters showed an accurate prediction of in-hospital death. Conclusions: Both the CCI and specific clusters of comorbidities are associated with in-hospital death from AHF among elderly patients. Specific phenotypes show a greater association with a worse short-term prognosis than a more generic scale, such as the CCI.
Subject(s)
Heart Failure , Humans , Male , Retrospective Studies , Hospital Mortality , Risk Factors , Comorbidity , Prognosis , Heart Failure/epidemiologyABSTRACT
Acute heart failure (AHF) is a cardiac emergency with an increasing incidence, especially among elderly patients. The Emergency Heart failure Mortality Risk Grade (EHMRG) has been validated to assess the 7-days AHF mortality risk, suggesting the management of patients admitted to an emergency department (ED). EHMRG has never been implemented in Italian ED nor among elderly patients. We aimed to assess EHMRG score accuracy in predicting in-hospital death in a retrospective cohort of elderly subjects admitted for AHF from the ED to an Internal Medicine Department. We enrolled, in a 24-months timeframe, all the patients admitted to an Internal Medicine Department from ED for AHF. We calculated the EHMRG score, subdividing patients into six categories, and assessing in-hospital mortality and length of stay. We evaluated EHMRG accuracy with ROC curve analysis and survival with Kaplan−Meier and Cox models. We collected 439 subjects, with 45 in-hospital deaths (10.3%), observing a significant increase of in-hospital death along with EHMRG class, from 0% (class 1) to 7.7% (class 5b; p < 0.0001). EHMRG was fairly accurate in the whole cohort (AUC: 0.75; 95%CI: 0.68−0.83; p < 0.0001), with the best cutoff observed at >103 (Se: 71.1%; Sp: 72.8%; LR+: 2.62; LR-: 0.40; PPV: 23.0%; NPV: 95.7%), but performed better considering the events in the first seven days of admission (AUC: 0.83; 95%; CI: 0.75−0.91; p < 0.0001). In light of our observations, EHMRG can be useful also for the Italian emergency system to predict the risk of short-term mortality for AHF among elderly patients. EHMRG performance was better in the first seven days but remained acceptable when considering the whole period of hospitalization.
ABSTRACT
The Emergency Heart Failure Mortality Risk Grade (EHMRG) can predict short-term mortality in patients admitted for acute heart failure (AHF) in the emergency department (ED). This paper aimed to evaluate if TAPSE/PASp, an echocardiographic marker of ventricular desynchronization, can improve in-hospital death prediction in patients at moderate-to-high risk, according to EHMRG score classification. From 1 January 2018 to 30 December 2019, we retrospectively enrolled all the consecutive subjects admitted to our Internal Medicine Department for AHF from the ED. We performed bedside echocardiography within the first 24 h of admission. We evaluated EHMRG and NYHA in the ED, days of admission in Internal Medicine, and in-hospital mortality. We assessed cutoffs with ROC curve analysis and survival with Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression. We obtained a cohort of 439 subjects; 10.3% underwent in-hospital death. Patients with normal TAPSE/PASp in EHMRG Classes 4, 5a, and 5b had higher survival rates (100%, 100%, and 94.3%, respectively), while subjects with pathologic TAPSE/PASp had lower survival rates (81.8%, 78.3%, and 43.4%, respectively) (p < 0.0001, log-rank test). TAPSE/PASp, an echocardiographic marker of ventricular desynchronization, can further stratify the risk of in-hospital death evaluated by EHMRG.
