A Comparative Study of Four Nutritional Evaluation Methods in Prognostic Evaluation of Elderly Patients with Chronic Heart Failure

Background Chronic heart failure is a syndrome occurring at the end-stage of multiple cardiovascular diseases. In the condition, nutritional and metabolic problems such as loss of appetite, diarrhea, abdominal distension, and constipation are highly prevalent, which in turn affect the prognosis of heart failure. The relationship of nutritional assessment results with prognosis in chronic heart failure has been studied extensively, while nutritional assessment for older adults with chronic heart failure has been rarely studied, and there is no clinically recognized assessment method. Objective To perform a comparative analysis of four nutritional assessment methods in terms of clinical prognosis prediction in elderly patients with chronic heart failure. Methods Eligible older inpatients with chronic heart failure (n=199) were recruited from Department of Cardiology, ICU, and Department of Geriatrics, Linyi People's Hospital from June 2018 to June 2020. Data were collected via reviewing the medical records and telephone-based follow-ups, including sex, age, height, weight, serum albumin (ALB) level, BMI, Geriatric Nutritional Risk Index (GNRI) , and result of Nutrition Risk Screening 2002 (NRS2002) , as well as prognosis〔containing three classifications: in-hospital deaths (n=43) and in-hospital survivors (n=156) ; one-year deaths (n=51) and one-year survivors (n=148) ; readmission within half a year (n=69) and readmission after half a year (n=130) 〕. Multivariate Logistic regression analysis was used to explore the prognostic factors of chronic heart failure. The analysis of ROC curve with AUC value was carried out to comparatively estimate prognosis predictive values of the nutritional assessment methods. Results There were significant differences in mean age, serum ALB, GNRI and NRS2002 score between in-hospital deaths and survivors (P