Hancock, Sophie and Oriani, Anna and Johnson, Miriam J and Macleod, Una and Gadoud, Amy (2020) 63 Systematic review of prognostic variables associated with mortality in adult patients with heart failure. In: Accepted Oral and Poster Abstract Submissions, The Palliative Care Congress 1 Specialty: 3 Settings – home, hospice, hospital 19–20 March 2020 | Telford International Centre :. BMJ Supportive and Palliative Care, 10 (Suppl ). UNSPECIFIED, A30-A31.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Background Heart failure is a serious life limiting condition and patients can have a high symptom burden, reduced quality of life and increased unscheduled hospital admissions. Despite guidance advocating a palliative care approach in advanced heart failure, the variable disease trajectory leads to difficulty in predicting prognosis, which acts as a barrier to considering palliative care for these patients.Aims This systematic review explores which clinically relevant variables are associated with a poor prognosis in heart failure and examines if it is possible to determine which of these variables best predict mortality.Method Databases including conference abstracts and grey literature were searched using pre-defined terms. Screening of title and abstract, followed by full text review against inclusion criteria. Two reviewers extracted data from included studies and assessed Hayden risk of bias. Findings were subjected to narrative synthesis as meta-analysis was not possible.Results 29306 records were screened resulting in 37 included studies. There was a plethora of prognostic variables studied, including demographic, laboratory, electrocardiography, echocardiogram and clinical variables as well as studies that developed models from multiple variables. The primary variables were often only studied once, but even for the few that were investigated more than once, were adjusted for by different covariates and so could not be combined.Conclusions This systematic review failed to find clinically useful prognostic variables to identify patients in the last year of life. Although we identified a variety of proposed prognostic variables, these were explored in a single or in only a few studies, often in restricted populations meaning they cannot be generalised. Identifying good predictors of this phase of life is useful to facilitate advance care planning. Future prognostication research should concentrate on variables measured over time and studying real life populations more representative of patients with advanced heart failure and comorbidity.