Desnutrição e caqueixa  em pacientes internados com insuficiência cardíaca descompensada: ocorrência e valor prognóstico

Abstract

Tavares LCA. Undernutrition and cachexia in hospitalized patients with decompensated heart failure: occurrence and prognostic value [dissertation].Introduction: Nutritional disorders are common among patients with heart failure (HF) and associated with poor prognosis. However, the great variability of the diagnostic criteria and the diversity of the populations studied make results poorly reproducible. There are few data about nutritional disorders in patients with HF at the national level. Objective: To study the occurrence of undernutrition and cachexia in patients with decompensated HF and its influence on hospital prognosis. Methods: Prospective cohort study of adults and elderly patients hospitalized with decompensated HF and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) less than 50%. The patients were submitted to nutritional evaluation including anamnesis, Subjective Global Nutritional Assessment (SGA), anthropometric measurements and were diagnosed for the presence of undernutrition, cachexia, low muscle mass and low muscle strength. Biochemical, clinical and ventricular function data were obtained by reviewing the medical record. We studied the outcomes: hospital discharge, death or need for heart transplantation during hospitalization. Results: 131 patients were analyzed, 64.9% were male, the median age was 56 years (IQR: 45-64), 40.5% had dilated cardiomyopathy, 32.1% Chagas disease and 19.1% ischemic cardiomyopathy. Patients had a median LVEF of 25% (20-30) and Btype natriuretic peptide (BNP) of 1093pg/ml (591-2149). Regarding nutritional assessment, the median Body Mass Index (BMI) was 23.3 kg/m2 (20.6-26.7), 25.2% presented low body weight according to BMI, 41.2% low muscle mass, 49.6% low strength muscle, 61.8% were diagnosed as undernourished and 48.1% were cachectic. Regarding the hospital outcome, 26% died and 29% received cardiac transplantation. The presence of nutritional disorders was related to some clinical characteristics, in order that a worse nutritional profile was found in patients that was male, with Chagas' cardiomyopathy, adults and who presented a higher severity of HF. Patients who had the worst outcomes had lower LVEF, BMI, lower muscle mass, higher serum levels of BNP and were more often undernourished and cachectic, but in the multivariate analysis, this relationship was not shown independently. Conclusions: Our findings show that there is a high occurrence of undernutrition and cachexia among hospitalized patients with decompensated HF in our setting, and that variables indicative of poor nutritional status are associated with worse outcomes during hospitalization.