Gender Effects on Acute Heart Failure

Arnon Blum, Rizak Sirchan, Lital Keinan-Boker
DOI: 10.4236/ijcm.2011.23040                

Abstract

Background: Congestive heart failure is the leading cause of hospitalization in the elderly. Little is known about gender effect on baseline characteristics and in-hospital outcome in patients admitted with acute heart failure. Our purpose was to study the gender effect on in-hospital mortality in acute heart failure patients. Methods and Results: A prospective study [143 patients, 67 men (73.9 ± 13.8 years old) and 76 women (77.8 ± 10.1 years old) (p = 0.059)] followed in-hospital outcome of patients with acute heart failure admitted to the hospital. Clinical parameters included body mass index (BMI), ankle brachial index (ABI), left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), re-admissions within 1 year, and in-hospital mortality. The gender effects that were studied included height, BMI, smoking, coronary artery disease, LVEF and mortality: in total, 9 (6.3%) patients died, of them 8 (10.5%) women and 1 (1.5%) man. Women were shorter (p < 0.001), had a higher BMI (p = 0.053), reported less frequently on current smoking (p < 0.001), had lower prevalence of coronary artery disease (p = 0.016), had a better LVEF (p = 0.02), but still, had a higher mortality rate (p = 0.026). The only variables independently affecting in-hospital mortality in women were height and recurrent admissions. When we tested for the effect of height and recurrent admissions on mortality only among females by a multivariate analysis height inversely and independently affected in-hospital mortality (p = 0.024), as well as recurrent admissions (p = 0.031). Conclusions: In-hospital mortality was significantly higher in women compared with men admitted with acute heart failure. Among females, the only independent variables that affected mortality were low stature and recurrent admissions.

Keywords

Gender, Heart Failure, In Hospital Death

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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