The Impact of Connective Tissue Diseases on the Inpatient Outcomes of Congestive Heart Failure Patients

Abstract

Background Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are autoimmune diseases with chronically elevated inflammatory activity. Treatments typically have been aimed at decreasing inflammation. While RA and SLE are known to have a high incidence of congestive heart failure (HF), the mechanism behind this remains elusive. We sought to assess the outcomes of HF patients with either RA or SLE as opposed to HF patients without RA or SLE. Methods We conducted a retrospective analysis of the Healthcare Utilization Project-National Inpatient Sample Database from 2010 to 2015 (third quarter). Patients with a primary admitting diagnosis of HF were queried, and those with or without a diagnosis of either SLE or RA were separated into two groups. In-hospital mortality, total charges (TOTCHG), and length of stay (LOS) were analyzed with a multivariate regression model adjusted for demographical and comorbidity variables, using generalized linear models with family binomial, gamma, and negative-binomial, respectively. A p-value smaller than 0.05 was deemed statistically significant. All the statistical analyses were performed in R 3.5.5

Cardiovascular Complications in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

“…The inflammatory nature of SLE is a crucial factor in developing heart failure (HF) [ 45 ]. In their retrospective cohort study that was published in 2017, Kim et al found that SLE puts the heart at a greater danger of the progress of HF in comparison with common people [ 46 ].…”