Preventable delays to intravenous furosemide administration in the emergency department prolong hospitalization for patients with acute heart failure

Background: We sought to examine whether factors impacting the time to emergency department (ED) administration of intravenous (IV) furosemide were associated with the duration of hospital admission for patients with acute heart failure (AHF).

Methods and results: We conducted a single-center, retrospective analysis of patients presenting to the ED and admitted between January 1, 2007 and December 31, 2014 who received a dose of IV furosemide. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to examine the likelihood that a patient would be discharged home alive, adjusting for patient demographics, AHF severity (low, moderate, high), laboratory result timing, and known AHF confounders. We identified 695 patients who met study criteria with 430 (61.9%) in the low-severity group. In the overall model, every 60-minute delay in IV furosemide administration was associated with an 8% lower chance of successful discharge home relative to someone who received early furosemide (aHR 0.93, 95%CI 0.87, 0.98, P = 0.012). Subgroup analysis suggests this association was most impactful in low-acuity patients. Our adjusted analysis suggests delaying furosemide administration until after serum creatinine results resulted in a 41% lower chance of successful discharge home relative to someone who had furosemide administered prior to creatinine results (aHR 1.41, 95%CI 1.07, 1,84).

Conclusions: AHF patients, particularly those with lower severity, may benefit from rapid administration of IV furosemide in the ED. This suggests that a key determinant of hospital visit duration in this low-risk cohort is decongestion, which occurs sooner when IV therapy is begun early in the ED stay regardless of serum creatinine.