Acute Heart Failure Risk Assessment Improves Outcomes: COACH
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Systematic mortality-risk assessment of patients who presented to hospital emergency departments for acute heart failure led to better patient outcomes in a controlled Canadian trial with more than 5,000 patients.
Thirty days after patients presented, the incidence of death from any cause or hospitalization for cardiovascular causes – one of two primary endpoints in the COACH study – was 12.1% among patients who underwent acute risk assessment and 14.5% in control patients who did not undergo this assessment, which translated into an adjusted, significant 12% relative risk reduction for the patients who underwent systematic assessment, Douglas S. Lee, MD, PhD, said at the American Heart Association scientific sessions.
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@haren The study's second primary endpoint, the incidence of the same combined outcome 20 months after initial presentation, was 54.4% among the 2,480 patients assessed with the risk-assessment tool and 56.2% in the 2,972 controls, a significant, adjusted relative risk reduction of 5%.
This benefit was primarily driven by reductions in cardiovascular hospitalizations, which fell by an adjusted 16% in the intervention group compared with controls, and more specifically by hospitalizations for heart failure, which tallied a relative 20% less with the intervention. Both were significant between-group differences.