Patterns of Weight Change Preceding Hospitalization for Heart Failure

Abstract

Background— Weight gain is used by disease-management programs as a marker of heart failure decompensation, but little information is available to quantify the relationship between weight change in patients with heart failure and the risk for imminent hospitalization. Methods and Results— We conducted a nested case-control study among patients with heart failure referred to a home monitoring system by managed care organizations. We matched 134 case patients with heart failure hospitalization to 134 control patients without heart failure hospitalization on the basis of age, sex, duration of home monitoring, heart failure severity, and baseline body weight. Compared with control patients, case patients experienced gradual weight gain beginning ≈30 days before hospitalization; changes in daily weight between case and control patients were statistically significant ( P Conclusions— Increases in body weight are associated with hospitalization for heart failure and begin at least 1 week before admission. Daily information about patients’ body weight identifies a high-risk period during which interventions to avert decompensated heart failure that necessitates hospitalization may be beneficial.