Impact of heart failure on stroke mortality and recurrence

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to examine the impact of heart failure (HF) on stroke mortality (in-hospital and postdischarge) and recurrence in a national stroke cohort from Thailand. METHODS: We used a large, insurance-based database including all stroke admissions in the public health sector in Thailand between 2004 and 2015. Logistic and Royston-Parmar regressions were used to quantify the effect of HF on in-hospital and long-term outcomes, respectively. All models were adjusted for age, sex and comorbidities and stratified by stroke type: acute ischaemic stroke (AIS) or intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH). Multistate models were constructed using flexible survival techniques to predict the impact of HF on the disease course of a patient with stroke (baseline-recurrence-death). Only first-ever cases of AIS or ICH were included in the multistate analysis. RESULTS: 608 890 patients (mean age 64.29±13.72 years, 55.07% men) were hospitalised (370 527 AIS, 173 236 ICH and 65 127 undetermined pathology). There were 398 663 patients with first-ever AIS and ICH. Patients were followed up for a median (95% CI) of 4.47 years (4.45 to 4.49). HF was associated with an increase in postdischarge mortality in AIS (HR 99% CI 1.69 1.64 to 1.74) and ICH (2.59 2.07 to 3.26). HF was not associated with AIS recurrence, while ICH recurrence was only significantly increased within the first 3 years after discharge (1.79 1.18 to 2.73). CONCLUSIONS: HF increases the risk of mortality in both AIS and ICH. We are the first to report on high-risk periods of stroke recurrence in patients with HF with ICH. Specific targeted risk reduction strategies may have significant clinical impact for mortality and recurrence in stroke.