Poor in-hospital congestion improvement in acute heart failure patients classified according to left ventricular ejection fraction: prognostic implications

Aims: Residual congestion in acute heart failure (AHF) is associated with poor prognosis. However, there is a lack of data on the prognostic value of changes in a combined assessment of in-hospital congestion. The present study sought to assess the association between in-hospital congestion changes and subsequent prognosis according to left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) classification.

Methods and results: Patients (N = 244, 80.3 ± 7.6 years, 50.8% male) admitted for acute HF in two European tertiary care centres underwent clinical assessment (congestion score included dyspnoea at rest, rales, third heart sound, jugular venous distention, peripheral oedema, and hepatomegaly; simplified congestion score included rales and peripheral oedema), echocardiography, lung ultrasound, and natriuretic peptides (NP) measurement at admission and discharge. The primary outcome was a composite of all-cause mortality and/or HF re-hospitalization. In the 244 considered patients (95 HF with reduced EF, 57 HF with mildly reduced EF, and 92 HF with preserved EF), patients with limited improvement in clinical congestion score (hazard ratio 2.33, 95% CI 1.51-3.61, P = 0.0001), NP levels (2.29, 95% CI 1.55-3.38, P < 0.0001), and the number of B-lines (6.44, 95% CI 4.19-9.89, P < 0.001) had a significantly higher risk of outcome compared with patients experiencing more sizeable decongestion. The same pattern of association was observed when adjusting for confounding factors. A limited improvement in clinical congestion score and in the number of B-lines was related to poor prognosis for all LVEF categories.

Conclusion: In AHF, the degree of congestion reduction assessed over the in-hospital stay period can stratify the subsequent event risk. Limited reduction in both clinical congestion and B-lines number are related to poor prognosis, irrespective of HF subtype.