Why the study?
Although obesity is an established risk factor for heart failure, recent evidence suggests obese heart failure patients report more favorable outcomes than normal weight patients, prompting a need to understand this paradox.
Does obesity confer a survival advantage in patients with established heart failure (the obesity paradox)?
Does obesity confer a survival advantage in patients with established heart failure (the obesity paradox)?
This review highlights the obesity-heart failure paradox, where despite being a risk factor for developing heart failure, obesity is associated with more favorable outcomes in established heart failure.
Alerts clinicians to potential obesity paradox in HF; extends observations but should not change practice yet.
Obesity is a long established risk factor for cardiovascular diseases including heart failure. However, recent evidence suggests that obese patients with heart failure report more favorable outcomes than heart failure patients with normal weights. This paper presents, reviews, and discusses some of the currently available evidence describing the association between obesity and heart failure, especially obesity as a risk factor for heart failure and the obesity-heart failure paradox. Pathophysiological evidence and data from longitudinal studies are considered.
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Odeyemi et al. (2022) studied this question.
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