Noncardiovascular death, especially infection, is a significant cause of death in elderly patients with acutely decompensated heart failure.

Abstract

BACKGROUND:Despite marked improvements in treatment strategies for heart failure (HF), the mortality rate of elderly patients with HF is still high. Detailed causes of death have not been fully understood.METHODS AND RESULTS:We studied 459 consecutive patients with acute decompensated HF (ADHF) emergently admitted to our hospital from 2007 to 2011. Patients were divided into 2 groups: <75 years old (younger group; n = 225) and ≥75 years old (elderly group; n = 234). All-cause death, cardiovascular death, and noncardiovascular death were assessed as adverse outcomes. Compared with the younger group, the elderly group was characterized by a higher proportion of women and hypertensive patients and higher left ventricular ejection fraction. During a mean follow-up of 20.7 months, a total of 174 patients (37.9%) died. All-cause death was significantly higher in the elderly group than in the younger group (46.6% vs 28.9%; P < .0001), and this difference was caused by an increase in noncardiovascular deaths (20.9% vs 9.3%; P < .001), especially deaths due to infection (10.7% vs 4.0%; P < .01). Cardiovascular deaths did not differ between the 2 groups.CONCLUSIONS:Noncardiovascular deaths, most of which were caused by infection, were frequent among elderly patients with ADHF.