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Only about a third of ideal candidates with heart failure are currently treated with [aldosterone antagonists], even though it markedly improves outcome and is Class I-recommended in the guidelines.
—Gregg Fonarow, MD, co-chief, University of California at Los Angeles division of cardiology, chair, American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines program steering committee
You might not have done a fellowship in cardiology, but quite often you probably feel like a cardiologist. Hospitalists frequently attend to patients on observation for heart problems and help manage even the most complex patients.
Often, you are working alongside the cardiologist. But other times, you’re on your own. Hospitalists are expected to carry an increasingly heavy load when it comes to heart-failure patients and many other kinds of patients with specialized disorders. It can be hard to keep up with what you need to know.
Top Twelve
- Recognize the new importance of beta-blockers for heart failure, and go with the best of them.
- It’s not readmissions that are the problem—it’s avoidable readmissions.
- New interventional technologies will mean more complex patients, so be ready.
- Aldosterone antagonists, though probably underutilized, can be very effective but require caution.
- Switching from IV diuretics to an oral regimen calls for careful monitoring.
- Patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction have outcomes over the longer haul similar to those with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. And in preserved ejection fraction cases, the contributing illnesses must be addressed.
- Inotropic agents can do more harm than good.
- Pay attention to the ins and outs of new antiplatelet therapies.
- Bridging anticoagulant therapy in patients going for electrophysiology procedures should be done only some, not most, of the time.
- Some non-STEMI patients might benefit from getting to the catheterization lab quickly.
- Beware the idiosyncrasies of new anticoagulants.
- Be cognizant of stent thrombosis and how to manage it.
The Hospitalist spoke to several cardiologists about the latest in treatments, technologies, and HM’s role in the system of care. The following are their suggestions for what you really need to know about treating patients with heart conditions.
1) Recognize the new importance of beta-blockers for heart failure, and go with the best of them.
Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensive receptor blockers have been part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) core measures for heart failure for a long time, but beta-blockers at hospital discharge only recently have been added as American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association/American Medical Association–Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement measures for heart failure.1
“For those with heart failure and reduced left ventricular ejection fraction, very old and outdated concepts would have talked about potentially holding the beta-blocker during hospitalization for heart failure—or not initiating until the patient was an outpatient,” says Gregg Fonarow, MD, co-chief of the University of California at Los Angeles’ division of cardiology and chair of the steering committee for the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines program. “[But] the guidelines and evidence, and often performance measures, linked to them are now explicit about initiating or maintaining beta-blockers during the heart-failure hospitalization.”
Beta-blockers should be initiated as patients are stabilized before discharge. Dr. Fonarow suggests hospitalists use only one of the three evidence-based therapies: carvedilol, metoprolol succinate, or bisoprolol.
“Many physicians have been using metoprolol tartrate or atenolol in heart-failure patients,” Dr. Fonarow says. “These are not known to improve clinical outcomes. So here’s an example where the specific medication is absolutely, critically important.”
2) It’s not readmissions that are the problem—it’s avoidable readmissions.
“The modifier is very important,” says Clyde Yancy, MD, chief of the division of cardiology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “Heart failure continues to be a problematic disease. Many patients now do really well, but some do not. Those patients are symptomatic and may require frequent hospitalizations for stabilization. We should not disallow or misdirect those patients who need inpatient care from receiving such because of an arbitrary incentive to reduce rehospitalizations out of fear of punitive financial damages. The unforeseen risks here are real.”
Dr. Yancy says studies based on CMS data have found that institutions with higher readmission rates have lower 30-day mortality rates.2 He cautions hospitalists to be “very thoughtful about an overzealous embrace of reducing all readmissions for heart failure.” Instead, the goal should be to limit the “avoidable readmissions.”
“And for the patient that clearly has advanced disease,” he says, “rather than triaging them away from the hospital, we really should be very respectful of their disease. Keep those patients where disease-modifying interventions can be deployed, and we can work to achieve the best possible outcome for those that have the most advanced disease.”
3) New interventional technologies will mean more complex patients, so be ready.
Advances in interventional procedures, including transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) and endoscopic mitral valve repair, will translate into a new population of highly complex patients. Many of these patients will be in their 80s or 90s.
“It’s a whole new paradigm shift of technology,” says John Harold, MD, president-elect of the American College of Cardiology and past chief of staff and department of medicine clinical chief of staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “Very often, the hospitalist is at the front dealing with all of these issues.”
Many of these patients have other problems, including renal insufficiency, diabetes, and the like.
“They have all sorts of other things going on simultaneously, so very often the hospitalist becomes … the point person in dealing with all of these issues,” Dr. Harold says.
4) Aldosterone antagonists, though probably underutilized, can be very effective but require caution.
Aldosterone antagonists can greatly improve outcomes and reduce hospitalization in heart-failure patients, but they have to be used with very careful dosing and patient selection, Dr. Fonarow says. And they require early follow-up once patients are discharged.
“Only about a third of ideal candidates with heart failure are currently treated with this agent, even though it markedly improves outcome and is Class I-recommended in the guidelines,” Dr. Fonarow says. “But this is one where it needs to be started at appropriate low doses, with meticulous monitoring in both the inpatient and the outpatient setting, early follow-up, and early laboratory checks.”
5) Switching from IV diuretics to an oral regimen calls for careful monitoring.
Transitioning patients from IV diuretics to oral regimens is an area rife with mistakes, Dr. Fonarow says. It requires a lot of “meticulous attention to proper potassium supplementation and monitoring of renal function and electrolyte levels,” he says.
Medication reconciliation—“med rec”—is especially important during the transition from inpatient to outpatient.
“There are common medication errors that are made during this transition,” Dr. Fonarow says. “Hospitalists, along with other [care team] members, can really play a critically important role in trying to reduce that risk.”
6) Patients with heart failure with preserved ejection
fraction have outcomes over the longer haul similar to those with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. And in preserved ejection fraction cases, the contributing illnesses must be addressed.
“We really can’t exercise a thought economy that just says, ‘Extrapolate the evidence-based therapies for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction to heart failure with preserved ejection fraction’ and expect good outcomes,” Dr. Yancy says. “That’s not the case. We don’t have an evidence base to substantiate that.”
He says one or more common comorbidities (e.g. atrial fibrillation, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, renal insufficiency) are present in 90% of patients with preserved ejection fraction. Treatment of those comorbidities—for example, rate control in afib patients, lowering the blood pressure in hypertension patients—has to be done with care.
“We should recognize that the therapy for this condition, albeit absent any specifically indicated interventions that will change its natural history, can still be skillfully constructed,” Dr. Yancy says. “But that construct needs to reflect the recommended, guideline-driven interventions for the concomitant other comorbidities.”
7) Inotropic agents can do more harm than good.
For patients who aren’t in cardiogenic shock, using inotropic agents doesn’t help. In fact, it might actually hurt. Dr. Fonarow says studies have shown these agents can “prolong length of stay, cause complications, and increase mortality risk.”
He notes that the use of inotropes should be avoided, or if it’s being considered, a cardiologist with knowledge and experience in heart failure should be involved in the treatment and care.
Statements about avoiding inotropes in heart failure, except under very specific circumstances, have been “incredibly strengthened” recently in the American College of Cardiology and Heart Failure Society of America guidelines.3
8) Pay attention to the ins and outs of new antiplatelet therapies.
—John Harold, MD, president-elect, American College of Cardiology, former chief of staff, department of medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles
Hospitalists caring for acute coronary syndrome patients need to familiarize themselves with updated guidelines and additional therapies that are now available, Dr. Fonarow says. New antiplatelet therapies (e.g. prasugrel and ticagrelor) are available as part of the armamentarium, along with the mainstay clopidogrel.
“These therapies lower the risk of recurrent events, lowered the risk of stent thrombosis,” he says. “In the case of ticagrelor, it actually lowered all-cause mortality. These are important new therapies, with new guideline recommendations, that all hospitalists should be aware of.”
9) Bridging anticoagulant therapy in patients going for electrophysiology procedures should be done only some, not most, of the time.
“Patients getting such devices as pacemakers or implantable cardioverter defribrillators (ICD) installed tend not to need bridging,” says Joaquin Cigarroa, MD, clinical chief of cardiology at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.
He says it’s actually “safer” to do the procedure when patients “are on oral antithrombotics than switching them from an oral agent, and bridging with low- molecular-weight- or unfractionated heparin.”
“It’s a big deal,” Dr. Cigarroa adds, because it is risky to have elderly and frail patients on multiple antithrombotics. “Hemorrhagic complications in cardiology patients still occurs very frequently, so really be attuned to estimating bleeding risk and making sure that we’re dosing antithrombotics appropriately. Bridging should be the minority of patients, not the majority of patients.”
10) Some non-STEMI patients might benefit from getting to the catheterization lab quickly.
Door-to-balloon time is recognized as critical for ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients, but more recent work—such as in the TIMACS trial—finds benefits of early revascularization for some non-STEMI patients as well.2
“This trial showed that among higher-risk patients, using a validated risk score, that those patients did benefit from an early approach, meaning going to the cath lab in the first 12 hours of hospitalization,” Dr. Fonarow says. “We now have more information about the optimal timing of coronary angiography and potential revascularization of higher-risk patients with non-ST-segment elevation MI.”
11) Beware the idiosyncrasies of new anticoagulants.
The introduction of dabigatran and rivaroxaban (and, perhaps soon, apixaban) to the array of anticoagulant therapies brings a new slate of considerations for hospitalists, Dr. Harold says.
“For the majority of these, there’s no specific way to reverse the anticoagulant effect in the event of a major bleeding event,” he says. “There’s no simple antidote. And the effect can last up to 12 to 24 hours, depending on the renal function. This is what the hospitalist will be called to deal with: bleeding complications in patients who have these newer anticoagulants on board.”
Dr. Fonarow says that the new CHA2DS2-VASc score has been found to do a better job than the traditional CHADS2 score in assessing afib stroke risk.4
12) Be cognizant of stent thrombosis and how to manage it.
Dr. Harold says that most hospitalists probably are up to date on drug-eluting stents and the risk of stopping dual antiplatelet therapy within several months of implant, but that doesn’t mean they won’t treat patients whose primary-care physicians (PCPs) aren’t up to date. He recommends working on these cases with hematologists.
“That knowledge is not widespread in terms of the internal-medicine community,” he says. “I’ve seen situations where patients have had their Plavix stopped for colonoscopies and they’ve had stent thrombosis. It’s this knowledge of cardiac patients who come in with recent deployment of drug-eluting stents who may end up having other issues.”
Tom Collins is a freelance writer in South Florida.
References
- 2009 Focused Update: ACCF/AHA Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Heart Failure in Adults. Circulation. 2009;119:1977-2016 an HFSA 2010 Comprehensive Heart Failure Practice Guideline. J Cardiac Failure. 2010;16(6):475-539.
- Gorodeski EZ, Starling RC, Blackstone EH. Are all readmissions bad readmissions? N Engl J Med. 2010;363:297-298.
- Mehta SR, Granger CB, Boden WE, et al. Early versus delayed invasive intervention in acute coronary syndromes. N Engl J Med. 2009;360(21):2165-2175.
- Olesen JB, Torp-Pedersen C, Hansen ML, Lip GY. The value of the CHA2DS2-VASc score for refining stroke risk stratification in patients with atrial fibrillation with a CHADS2 score 0-1: a nationwide cohort study. Thromb Haemost. 2012;107(6):1172-1179.
- Associations between outpatient heart failure process-of-care measures and mortality. Circulation. 2011;123(15):1601-1610.
Only about a third of ideal candidates with heart failure are currently treated with [aldosterone antagonists], even though it markedly improves outcome and is Class I-recommended in the guidelines.
—Gregg Fonarow, MD, co-chief, University of California at Los Angeles division of cardiology, chair, American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines program steering committee
You might not have done a fellowship in cardiology, but quite often you probably feel like a cardiologist. Hospitalists frequently attend to patients on observation for heart problems and help manage even the most complex patients.
Often, you are working alongside the cardiologist. But other times, you’re on your own. Hospitalists are expected to carry an increasingly heavy load when it comes to heart-failure patients and many other kinds of patients with specialized disorders. It can be hard to keep up with what you need to know.
Top Twelve
- Recognize the new importance of beta-blockers for heart failure, and go with the best of them.
- It’s not readmissions that are the problem—it’s avoidable readmissions.
- New interventional technologies will mean more complex patients, so be ready.
- Aldosterone antagonists, though probably underutilized, can be very effective but require caution.
- Switching from IV diuretics to an oral regimen calls for careful monitoring.
- Patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction have outcomes over the longer haul similar to those with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. And in preserved ejection fraction cases, the contributing illnesses must be addressed.
- Inotropic agents can do more harm than good.
- Pay attention to the ins and outs of new antiplatelet therapies.
- Bridging anticoagulant therapy in patients going for electrophysiology procedures should be done only some, not most, of the time.
- Some non-STEMI patients might benefit from getting to the catheterization lab quickly.
- Beware the idiosyncrasies of new anticoagulants.
- Be cognizant of stent thrombosis and how to manage it.
The Hospitalist spoke to several cardiologists about the latest in treatments, technologies, and HM’s role in the system of care. The following are their suggestions for what you really need to know about treating patients with heart conditions.
1) Recognize the new importance of beta-blockers for heart failure, and go with the best of them.
Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensive receptor blockers have been part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) core measures for heart failure for a long time, but beta-blockers at hospital discharge only recently have been added as American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association/American Medical Association–Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement measures for heart failure.1
“For those with heart failure and reduced left ventricular ejection fraction, very old and outdated concepts would have talked about potentially holding the beta-blocker during hospitalization for heart failure—or not initiating until the patient was an outpatient,” says Gregg Fonarow, MD, co-chief of the University of California at Los Angeles’ division of cardiology and chair of the steering committee for the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines program. “[But] the guidelines and evidence, and often performance measures, linked to them are now explicit about initiating or maintaining beta-blockers during the heart-failure hospitalization.”
Beta-blockers should be initiated as patients are stabilized before discharge. Dr. Fonarow suggests hospitalists use only one of the three evidence-based therapies: carvedilol, metoprolol succinate, or bisoprolol.
“Many physicians have been using metoprolol tartrate or atenolol in heart-failure patients,” Dr. Fonarow says. “These are not known to improve clinical outcomes. So here’s an example where the specific medication is absolutely, critically important.”
2) It’s not readmissions that are the problem—it’s avoidable readmissions.
“The modifier is very important,” says Clyde Yancy, MD, chief of the division of cardiology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “Heart failure continues to be a problematic disease. Many patients now do really well, but some do not. Those patients are symptomatic and may require frequent hospitalizations for stabilization. We should not disallow or misdirect those patients who need inpatient care from receiving such because of an arbitrary incentive to reduce rehospitalizations out of fear of punitive financial damages. The unforeseen risks here are real.”
Dr. Yancy says studies based on CMS data have found that institutions with higher readmission rates have lower 30-day mortality rates.2 He cautions hospitalists to be “very thoughtful about an overzealous embrace of reducing all readmissions for heart failure.” Instead, the goal should be to limit the “avoidable readmissions.”
“And for the patient that clearly has advanced disease,” he says, “rather than triaging them away from the hospital, we really should be very respectful of their disease. Keep those patients where disease-modifying interventions can be deployed, and we can work to achieve the best possible outcome for those that have the most advanced disease.”
3) New interventional technologies will mean more complex patients, so be ready.
Advances in interventional procedures, including transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) and endoscopic mitral valve repair, will translate into a new population of highly complex patients. Many of these patients will be in their 80s or 90s.
“It’s a whole new paradigm shift of technology,” says John Harold, MD, president-elect of the American College of Cardiology and past chief of staff and department of medicine clinical chief of staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “Very often, the hospitalist is at the front dealing with all of these issues.”
Many of these patients have other problems, including renal insufficiency, diabetes, and the like.
“They have all sorts of other things going on simultaneously, so very often the hospitalist becomes … the point person in dealing with all of these issues,” Dr. Harold says.
4) Aldosterone antagonists, though probably underutilized, can be very effective but require caution.
Aldosterone antagonists can greatly improve outcomes and reduce hospitalization in heart-failure patients, but they have to be used with very careful dosing and patient selection, Dr. Fonarow says. And they require early follow-up once patients are discharged.
“Only about a third of ideal candidates with heart failure are currently treated with this agent, even though it markedly improves outcome and is Class I-recommended in the guidelines,” Dr. Fonarow says. “But this is one where it needs to be started at appropriate low doses, with meticulous monitoring in both the inpatient and the outpatient setting, early follow-up, and early laboratory checks.”
5) Switching from IV diuretics to an oral regimen calls for careful monitoring.
Transitioning patients from IV diuretics to oral regimens is an area rife with mistakes, Dr. Fonarow says. It requires a lot of “meticulous attention to proper potassium supplementation and monitoring of renal function and electrolyte levels,” he says.
Medication reconciliation—“med rec”—is especially important during the transition from inpatient to outpatient.
“There are common medication errors that are made during this transition,” Dr. Fonarow says. “Hospitalists, along with other [care team] members, can really play a critically important role in trying to reduce that risk.”
6) Patients with heart failure with preserved ejection
fraction have outcomes over the longer haul similar to those with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. And in preserved ejection fraction cases, the contributing illnesses must be addressed.
“We really can’t exercise a thought economy that just says, ‘Extrapolate the evidence-based therapies for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction to heart failure with preserved ejection fraction’ and expect good outcomes,” Dr. Yancy says. “That’s not the case. We don’t have an evidence base to substantiate that.”
He says one or more common comorbidities (e.g. atrial fibrillation, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, renal insufficiency) are present in 90% of patients with preserved ejection fraction. Treatment of those comorbidities—for example, rate control in afib patients, lowering the blood pressure in hypertension patients—has to be done with care.
“We should recognize that the therapy for this condition, albeit absent any specifically indicated interventions that will change its natural history, can still be skillfully constructed,” Dr. Yancy says. “But that construct needs to reflect the recommended, guideline-driven interventions for the concomitant other comorbidities.”
7) Inotropic agents can do more harm than good.
For patients who aren’t in cardiogenic shock, using inotropic agents doesn’t help. In fact, it might actually hurt. Dr. Fonarow says studies have shown these agents can “prolong length of stay, cause complications, and increase mortality risk.”
He notes that the use of inotropes should be avoided, or if it’s being considered, a cardiologist with knowledge and experience in heart failure should be involved in the treatment and care.
Statements about avoiding inotropes in heart failure, except under very specific circumstances, have been “incredibly strengthened” recently in the American College of Cardiology and Heart Failure Society of America guidelines.3
8) Pay attention to the ins and outs of new antiplatelet therapies.
—John Harold, MD, president-elect, American College of Cardiology, former chief of staff, department of medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles
Hospitalists caring for acute coronary syndrome patients need to familiarize themselves with updated guidelines and additional therapies that are now available, Dr. Fonarow says. New antiplatelet therapies (e.g. prasugrel and ticagrelor) are available as part of the armamentarium, along with the mainstay clopidogrel.
“These therapies lower the risk of recurrent events, lowered the risk of stent thrombosis,” he says. “In the case of ticagrelor, it actually lowered all-cause mortality. These are important new therapies, with new guideline recommendations, that all hospitalists should be aware of.”
9) Bridging anticoagulant therapy in patients going for electrophysiology procedures should be done only some, not most, of the time.
“Patients getting such devices as pacemakers or implantable cardioverter defribrillators (ICD) installed tend not to need bridging,” says Joaquin Cigarroa, MD, clinical chief of cardiology at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.
He says it’s actually “safer” to do the procedure when patients “are on oral antithrombotics than switching them from an oral agent, and bridging with low- molecular-weight- or unfractionated heparin.”
“It’s a big deal,” Dr. Cigarroa adds, because it is risky to have elderly and frail patients on multiple antithrombotics. “Hemorrhagic complications in cardiology patients still occurs very frequently, so really be attuned to estimating bleeding risk and making sure that we’re dosing antithrombotics appropriately. Bridging should be the minority of patients, not the majority of patients.”
10) Some non-STEMI patients might benefit from getting to the catheterization lab quickly.
Door-to-balloon time is recognized as critical for ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients, but more recent work—such as in the TIMACS trial—finds benefits of early revascularization for some non-STEMI patients as well.2
“This trial showed that among higher-risk patients, using a validated risk score, that those patients did benefit from an early approach, meaning going to the cath lab in the first 12 hours of hospitalization,” Dr. Fonarow says. “We now have more information about the optimal timing of coronary angiography and potential revascularization of higher-risk patients with non-ST-segment elevation MI.”
11) Beware the idiosyncrasies of new anticoagulants.
The introduction of dabigatran and rivaroxaban (and, perhaps soon, apixaban) to the array of anticoagulant therapies brings a new slate of considerations for hospitalists, Dr. Harold says.
“For the majority of these, there’s no specific way to reverse the anticoagulant effect in the event of a major bleeding event,” he says. “There’s no simple antidote. And the effect can last up to 12 to 24 hours, depending on the renal function. This is what the hospitalist will be called to deal with: bleeding complications in patients who have these newer anticoagulants on board.”
Dr. Fonarow says that the new CHA2DS2-VASc score has been found to do a better job than the traditional CHADS2 score in assessing afib stroke risk.4
12) Be cognizant of stent thrombosis and how to manage it.
Dr. Harold says that most hospitalists probably are up to date on drug-eluting stents and the risk of stopping dual antiplatelet therapy within several months of implant, but that doesn’t mean they won’t treat patients whose primary-care physicians (PCPs) aren’t up to date. He recommends working on these cases with hematologists.
“That knowledge is not widespread in terms of the internal-medicine community,” he says. “I’ve seen situations where patients have had their Plavix stopped for colonoscopies and they’ve had stent thrombosis. It’s this knowledge of cardiac patients who come in with recent deployment of drug-eluting stents who may end up having other issues.”
Tom Collins is a freelance writer in South Florida.
References
- 2009 Focused Update: ACCF/AHA Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Heart Failure in Adults. Circulation. 2009;119:1977-2016 an HFSA 2010 Comprehensive Heart Failure Practice Guideline. J Cardiac Failure. 2010;16(6):475-539.
- Gorodeski EZ, Starling RC, Blackstone EH. Are all readmissions bad readmissions? N Engl J Med. 2010;363:297-298.
- Mehta SR, Granger CB, Boden WE, et al. Early versus delayed invasive intervention in acute coronary syndromes. N Engl J Med. 2009;360(21):2165-2175.
- Olesen JB, Torp-Pedersen C, Hansen ML, Lip GY. The value of the CHA2DS2-VASc score for refining stroke risk stratification in patients with atrial fibrillation with a CHADS2 score 0-1: a nationwide cohort study. Thromb Haemost. 2012;107(6):1172-1179.
- Associations between outpatient heart failure process-of-care measures and mortality. Circulation. 2011;123(15):1601-1610.
Only about a third of ideal candidates with heart failure are currently treated with [aldosterone antagonists], even though it markedly improves outcome and is Class I-recommended in the guidelines.
—Gregg Fonarow, MD, co-chief, University of California at Los Angeles division of cardiology, chair, American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines program steering committee
You might not have done a fellowship in cardiology, but quite often you probably feel like a cardiologist. Hospitalists frequently attend to patients on observation for heart problems and help manage even the most complex patients.
Often, you are working alongside the cardiologist. But other times, you’re on your own. Hospitalists are expected to carry an increasingly heavy load when it comes to heart-failure patients and many other kinds of patients with specialized disorders. It can be hard to keep up with what you need to know.
Top Twelve
- Recognize the new importance of beta-blockers for heart failure, and go with the best of them.
- It’s not readmissions that are the problem—it’s avoidable readmissions.
- New interventional technologies will mean more complex patients, so be ready.
- Aldosterone antagonists, though probably underutilized, can be very effective but require caution.
- Switching from IV diuretics to an oral regimen calls for careful monitoring.
- Patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction have outcomes over the longer haul similar to those with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. And in preserved ejection fraction cases, the contributing illnesses must be addressed.
- Inotropic agents can do more harm than good.
- Pay attention to the ins and outs of new antiplatelet therapies.
- Bridging anticoagulant therapy in patients going for electrophysiology procedures should be done only some, not most, of the time.
- Some non-STEMI patients might benefit from getting to the catheterization lab quickly.
- Beware the idiosyncrasies of new anticoagulants.
- Be cognizant of stent thrombosis and how to manage it.
The Hospitalist spoke to several cardiologists about the latest in treatments, technologies, and HM’s role in the system of care. The following are their suggestions for what you really need to know about treating patients with heart conditions.
1) Recognize the new importance of beta-blockers for heart failure, and go with the best of them.
Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensive receptor blockers have been part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) core measures for heart failure for a long time, but beta-blockers at hospital discharge only recently have been added as American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association/American Medical Association–Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement measures for heart failure.1
“For those with heart failure and reduced left ventricular ejection fraction, very old and outdated concepts would have talked about potentially holding the beta-blocker during hospitalization for heart failure—or not initiating until the patient was an outpatient,” says Gregg Fonarow, MD, co-chief of the University of California at Los Angeles’ division of cardiology and chair of the steering committee for the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines program. “[But] the guidelines and evidence, and often performance measures, linked to them are now explicit about initiating or maintaining beta-blockers during the heart-failure hospitalization.”
Beta-blockers should be initiated as patients are stabilized before discharge. Dr. Fonarow suggests hospitalists use only one of the three evidence-based therapies: carvedilol, metoprolol succinate, or bisoprolol.
“Many physicians have been using metoprolol tartrate or atenolol in heart-failure patients,” Dr. Fonarow says. “These are not known to improve clinical outcomes. So here’s an example where the specific medication is absolutely, critically important.”
2) It’s not readmissions that are the problem—it’s avoidable readmissions.
“The modifier is very important,” says Clyde Yancy, MD, chief of the division of cardiology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “Heart failure continues to be a problematic disease. Many patients now do really well, but some do not. Those patients are symptomatic and may require frequent hospitalizations for stabilization. We should not disallow or misdirect those patients who need inpatient care from receiving such because of an arbitrary incentive to reduce rehospitalizations out of fear of punitive financial damages. The unforeseen risks here are real.”
Dr. Yancy says studies based on CMS data have found that institutions with higher readmission rates have lower 30-day mortality rates.2 He cautions hospitalists to be “very thoughtful about an overzealous embrace of reducing all readmissions for heart failure.” Instead, the goal should be to limit the “avoidable readmissions.”
“And for the patient that clearly has advanced disease,” he says, “rather than triaging them away from the hospital, we really should be very respectful of their disease. Keep those patients where disease-modifying interventions can be deployed, and we can work to achieve the best possible outcome for those that have the most advanced disease.”
3) New interventional technologies will mean more complex patients, so be ready.
Advances in interventional procedures, including transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) and endoscopic mitral valve repair, will translate into a new population of highly complex patients. Many of these patients will be in their 80s or 90s.
“It’s a whole new paradigm shift of technology,” says John Harold, MD, president-elect of the American College of Cardiology and past chief of staff and department of medicine clinical chief of staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “Very often, the hospitalist is at the front dealing with all of these issues.”
Many of these patients have other problems, including renal insufficiency, diabetes, and the like.
“They have all sorts of other things going on simultaneously, so very often the hospitalist becomes … the point person in dealing with all of these issues,” Dr. Harold says.
4) Aldosterone antagonists, though probably underutilized, can be very effective but require caution.
Aldosterone antagonists can greatly improve outcomes and reduce hospitalization in heart-failure patients, but they have to be used with very careful dosing and patient selection, Dr. Fonarow says. And they require early follow-up once patients are discharged.
“Only about a third of ideal candidates with heart failure are currently treated with this agent, even though it markedly improves outcome and is Class I-recommended in the guidelines,” Dr. Fonarow says. “But this is one where it needs to be started at appropriate low doses, with meticulous monitoring in both the inpatient and the outpatient setting, early follow-up, and early laboratory checks.”
5) Switching from IV diuretics to an oral regimen calls for careful monitoring.
Transitioning patients from IV diuretics to oral regimens is an area rife with mistakes, Dr. Fonarow says. It requires a lot of “meticulous attention to proper potassium supplementation and monitoring of renal function and electrolyte levels,” he says.
Medication reconciliation—“med rec”—is especially important during the transition from inpatient to outpatient.
“There are common medication errors that are made during this transition,” Dr. Fonarow says. “Hospitalists, along with other [care team] members, can really play a critically important role in trying to reduce that risk.”
6) Patients with heart failure with preserved ejection
fraction have outcomes over the longer haul similar to those with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. And in preserved ejection fraction cases, the contributing illnesses must be addressed.
“We really can’t exercise a thought economy that just says, ‘Extrapolate the evidence-based therapies for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction to heart failure with preserved ejection fraction’ and expect good outcomes,” Dr. Yancy says. “That’s not the case. We don’t have an evidence base to substantiate that.”
He says one or more common comorbidities (e.g. atrial fibrillation, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, renal insufficiency) are present in 90% of patients with preserved ejection fraction. Treatment of those comorbidities—for example, rate control in afib patients, lowering the blood pressure in hypertension patients—has to be done with care.
“We should recognize that the therapy for this condition, albeit absent any specifically indicated interventions that will change its natural history, can still be skillfully constructed,” Dr. Yancy says. “But that construct needs to reflect the recommended, guideline-driven interventions for the concomitant other comorbidities.”
7) Inotropic agents can do more harm than good.
For patients who aren’t in cardiogenic shock, using inotropic agents doesn’t help. In fact, it might actually hurt. Dr. Fonarow says studies have shown these agents can “prolong length of stay, cause complications, and increase mortality risk.”
He notes that the use of inotropes should be avoided, or if it’s being considered, a cardiologist with knowledge and experience in heart failure should be involved in the treatment and care.
Statements about avoiding inotropes in heart failure, except under very specific circumstances, have been “incredibly strengthened” recently in the American College of Cardiology and Heart Failure Society of America guidelines.3
8) Pay attention to the ins and outs of new antiplatelet therapies.
—John Harold, MD, president-elect, American College of Cardiology, former chief of staff, department of medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles
Hospitalists caring for acute coronary syndrome patients need to familiarize themselves with updated guidelines and additional therapies that are now available, Dr. Fonarow says. New antiplatelet therapies (e.g. prasugrel and ticagrelor) are available as part of the armamentarium, along with the mainstay clopidogrel.
“These therapies lower the risk of recurrent events, lowered the risk of stent thrombosis,” he says. “In the case of ticagrelor, it actually lowered all-cause mortality. These are important new therapies, with new guideline recommendations, that all hospitalists should be aware of.”
9) Bridging anticoagulant therapy in patients going for electrophysiology procedures should be done only some, not most, of the time.
“Patients getting such devices as pacemakers or implantable cardioverter defribrillators (ICD) installed tend not to need bridging,” says Joaquin Cigarroa, MD, clinical chief of cardiology at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.
He says it’s actually “safer” to do the procedure when patients “are on oral antithrombotics than switching them from an oral agent, and bridging with low- molecular-weight- or unfractionated heparin.”
“It’s a big deal,” Dr. Cigarroa adds, because it is risky to have elderly and frail patients on multiple antithrombotics. “Hemorrhagic complications in cardiology patients still occurs very frequently, so really be attuned to estimating bleeding risk and making sure that we’re dosing antithrombotics appropriately. Bridging should be the minority of patients, not the majority of patients.”
10) Some non-STEMI patients might benefit from getting to the catheterization lab quickly.
Door-to-balloon time is recognized as critical for ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients, but more recent work—such as in the TIMACS trial—finds benefits of early revascularization for some non-STEMI patients as well.2
“This trial showed that among higher-risk patients, using a validated risk score, that those patients did benefit from an early approach, meaning going to the cath lab in the first 12 hours of hospitalization,” Dr. Fonarow says. “We now have more information about the optimal timing of coronary angiography and potential revascularization of higher-risk patients with non-ST-segment elevation MI.”
11) Beware the idiosyncrasies of new anticoagulants.
The introduction of dabigatran and rivaroxaban (and, perhaps soon, apixaban) to the array of anticoagulant therapies brings a new slate of considerations for hospitalists, Dr. Harold says.
“For the majority of these, there’s no specific way to reverse the anticoagulant effect in the event of a major bleeding event,” he says. “There’s no simple antidote. And the effect can last up to 12 to 24 hours, depending on the renal function. This is what the hospitalist will be called to deal with: bleeding complications in patients who have these newer anticoagulants on board.”
Dr. Fonarow says that the new CHA2DS2-VASc score has been found to do a better job than the traditional CHADS2 score in assessing afib stroke risk.4
12) Be cognizant of stent thrombosis and how to manage it.
Dr. Harold says that most hospitalists probably are up to date on drug-eluting stents and the risk of stopping dual antiplatelet therapy within several months of implant, but that doesn’t mean they won’t treat patients whose primary-care physicians (PCPs) aren’t up to date. He recommends working on these cases with hematologists.
“That knowledge is not widespread in terms of the internal-medicine community,” he says. “I’ve seen situations where patients have had their Plavix stopped for colonoscopies and they’ve had stent thrombosis. It’s this knowledge of cardiac patients who come in with recent deployment of drug-eluting stents who may end up having other issues.”
Tom Collins is a freelance writer in South Florida.
References
- 2009 Focused Update: ACCF/AHA Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Heart Failure in Adults. Circulation. 2009;119:1977-2016 an HFSA 2010 Comprehensive Heart Failure Practice Guideline. J Cardiac Failure. 2010;16(6):475-539.
- Gorodeski EZ, Starling RC, Blackstone EH. Are all readmissions bad readmissions? N Engl J Med. 2010;363:297-298.
- Mehta SR, Granger CB, Boden WE, et al. Early versus delayed invasive intervention in acute coronary syndromes. N Engl J Med. 2009;360(21):2165-2175.
- Olesen JB, Torp-Pedersen C, Hansen ML, Lip GY. The value of the CHA2DS2-VASc score for refining stroke risk stratification in patients with atrial fibrillation with a CHADS2 score 0-1: a nationwide cohort study. Thromb Haemost. 2012;107(6):1172-1179.
- Associations between outpatient heart failure process-of-care measures and mortality. Circulation. 2011;123(15):1601-1610.