Heart failure patients face a substantial risk of pneumonia
Pneumonia is quite common among patients with heart failure with reduce ejection fraction (HFrEF) and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), researchers reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
“Although usually considered to be an acute event, there is evidence that pneumonia is associated with long-term cardiovascular sequelae, particularly acute coronary events, and the same may be true for heart failure, although this has not been investigated fully,” wrote lead author Li Shen, a specialist at Hangzhou Normal University in China, and colleagues.
Shen et al. explored data from two different clinical trials, focusing on more than 8,000 patients with HFrEF from the PARADIGM-HF trial and more than 4,500 patients with HFpEF from the PARAGON-HF trial.
Overall, 6.3% of patients with HFrEF—or 29 per 1,000 patient-years—developed pneumonia. That number was 10.6%—or 39 per 1,000 patient-years—for patients with HFpEF.
For context, previous studies investigating the rate of pneumonia in the general population have concluded that it is approximately 10 per 1,000 patient-years for patients between the ages of 65 to 79 and 27 per 1,000 patient-years for patients over the age of 80.
In both the PARADIGM-HF trial and the PARAGON-HF trial, pneumonia was more common among older patients and patients with a higher number of comorbidities. Pneumonia was also associated with “substantially higher rates of fatal and nonfatal adverse outcomes.”
“The mechanisms underlying the sustained risk after pneumonia warrant further investigation and more aggressive use of pneumococcal and influenza vaccinations is encouraged in patients with heart failure,” the authors wrote.
Read the full study here.
Michael has more than 18 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.