Cor Vasa 2008, 50(1):12-21 | DOI: 10.33678/cor.2008.012

Acute heart failure databases in specialist departments of cardiology

Jindřich Špinar¹, Michael Aschermann², Hikmet Al-Hiti³, Jan Bělohlávek², Ladislav Dušek⁵, Ota Hlinomaz⁴, Jiří Kettner³, Aleš Linhart², Ivan Málek³, Roman Miklík¹, Martin Novák⁴, Jiří Pařenica¹, Jiří Vítovec⁴

¹ Interní kardiologická klinika, Fakultní nemocnice Brno a Lékařská fakulta Masarykovy univerzity, Brno

² II. interní klinika, Všeobecná fakultní nemocnice a 1. lékařská fakulta Univerzity Karlovy

³ Klinika kardiologie, Institut klinické a experimentální medicíny, Praha

⁴ Interní kardio-angiologická klinika, Fakultní nemocnice u sv. Anny a Lékařská fakulta Masarykovy univerzity

⁵ Institut biostatistiky a analýz Masarykovy univerzity, Brno, Česká republika

Introduction:
Acute heart failure is a disease associated with high mortality rates, difficult to diagnose and treat.

Aim:
To describe the incidence of acute heart failure in departments of cardiology with cath labs.

Methods:
A database of acute heart failure patients hospitalized in specialist departments of cardiology was launched as part of a research project in 2005 at the Department of Medicine/Cardiology of Brno Teaching Hospital and has continued to be run as a prospective database called AHEAD (Acute HEArt failure Database) in three other departments (Department of Cardiology, IKEM Prague; Department of Medicine II, General University Hospital, Prague; and Dept of Internal Medicine/ Cardioangiology, St. Anna Hospital, Brno) since June 2006. The database is currently in electronic format and upgraded for on-line collection and evaluation of the data acquired. The format of data provides information about the etiology,
treatment, and prognosis of patients hospitalized for acute heart failure.

Results:
The pilot phase of the database operation, assessed in this paper, furnishes information about 1,191 patients with in-hospital mortality of 12.5%. The most common cause of de novo heart failure is acute coronary syndrome, and coronary heart disease without acute coronary syndrome in patients with decompensated chronic heart failure.

Conclusion:
In acute heart failure, it is mainly older age, low and normal blood pressure on admission, and impaired renal function, which are associated with a grim prognosis. Those with the highest in-hospital mortality rates are patients in cardiogenic shock and patients with acute right-heart failure in pulmonary embolism.

Keywords: Acute heart failure; Acute coronary syndrome; Cardiogenic shock; Mortality

Published: January 1, 2008  Show citation