Apnea Rampant In Acute Decompensated Heart Failure II

Background:

Heart failure (HF) affects 5 to 6 million Americans and is increasing in prevalence. There are about 550,000 new cases of heart failure every year and about 3 million admissions for acute decompensated heart failure every year. Despite advances in medical care, the hospital readmission rate is 20% at one month and 50% at six months. The total cost of heart failure on the health system is upwards of 35 billion dollars per year. About half of these resources are used during acute hospitalizations.

An important limitation to the current approach to the management of HF is the focus on the awake patient. This approach underestimates the mechanisms that might contribute to the pathophysiology or progression of HF.

Sleep disordered breathing (SDB) is very common in congestive heart failure. Recently, the adverse implications of SDB in patients with HF have been appreciated. Intermittent apnea-induced hypoxia, hypercapnia, surges in central sympathetic outflow and left ventricular afterload, daytime hypertension, and loss of vagal heart rate regulation are potent stimuli to myocyte necrosis and apoptosis, myocardial ischemia, arrhythmias, adverse cardiac remodeling, and the resulting accelerated disease progression in HF.

This makes us believe that treatment of SDB during acute decompensated heart failure in addition to standard medical therapy (SMT) would be beneficial.