predictors of readmission in hospitalized heart failure patients

Introduction: heart failure (hf) related hospitalization constitutes a significant proportion of healthcare cost. unchanging rates of readmission during recent years, shows the importance of addressing this problem.methods: patients admitted with heart failure diagnosis in our institution during april 2018 to august 2018 were selected. clinical, para-clinical and imaging data were recorded. allincluded patients were followed up for 6 months. the primary endpoints of the study were prevalence of early readmission and the predictors of that. secondary end points were inhospital and 6-month post-discharge mortality rate and late readmission rate.results: after excluding 94 patients due to missing data, 428 patients were selected. mean age of patients was 58.5 years ( ± 17.4) and 61% of patients were male. during follow-up, 99 patients (24%) were readmitted. early re-admission (30-day) occurred in 27 of the patients (6.6%). the predictors of readmission were older age (p = 0.006), lower lvef (p < 0.0001), higher body weight (p = 0.01), icd/crt implantation (p = 0.001), lower sodium (p = 0.01), higher pro-bnp (p = 0.01), higher wbc count (p = 0.01) and higher bun level (p = 0.02). independent predictors of early readmission were history of device implantation (p = 0.007), lower lvef (p = 0.016), qrs duration more than 120 ms (p = 0.037), higher levels of bun (p = 0.008), higher levels of pro-bnp (p = 0.037) and higher levels of uric acid (p = 0.035). secondary end points including in-hospital and 6-month post-discharge mortality occurred in 11% and 14.4%of patients respectively.conclusion: lower age of our heart failure patients and high prevalence of ischemic cardiomyopathy, necessitate focusing on more preventable factors related to heart failure.