Effect of Heart Failure Secondary to Ischemic Cardiomyopathy on Body Weight and Blood Pressure

Both the obesity paradox and blood pressure (BP) paradox remain ill defined. Because both obesity and hypertension are well-known predictors of coronary artery disease (CAD) and acute heart failure (HF), in the present study, we compared the obesity paradox and the BP paradox between patients with acute HF with and without a history of CAD. A multicenter retrospective study was conducted on 3,204 consecutive patients with acute HF. Potential risk factors for in-hospital mortality were selected by univariate analyses; multivariate Cox regression analysis with backward stepwise selection was then used to identify significant factors. Kaplan-Meier survival curves and log-rank testing were used to compare in-hospital mortality between groups. Across the study cohort, 27% of patients had a history of CAD, and the all-cause in-hospital mortality rate was 5%. In-hospital mortality was significantly lower for patients with obesity than in those without obesity (log-rank, p = 0.033). However, this obesity paradox disappeared in the group with HF and CAD (log-rank, p = 0.740). In contrast, in-hospital mortality was significantly lower for patients with high BP at admission, regardless of the presence of a history of CAD (log-rank, p <0.001 for both groups). In conclusion, a history of CAD canceled the obesity paradox in patients with acute HF, whereas the BP paradox persisted regardless of a history of CAD.