Predictors of one-year mortality at hospital discharge after acute coronary syndromes: A new risk score from the EPICOR (long-tErm follow uP of antithrombotic management patterns In acute CORonary syndrome patients) study

Eur Heart J Acute Cardiovasc Care. 2015 Dec;4(6):509-17. doi: 10.1177/2048872614554198. Epub 2014 Oct 9.

Abstract

Aims: A reliable prediction tool is needed to identify acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients with high mortality risk after their initial hospitalization.

Methods: EPICOR (long-tErm follow uP of antithrombotic management patterns In acute CORonary syndrome patients: NCT01171404) is a prospective cohort study of 10,568 consecutive hospital survivors after an ACS event (4943 ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and 5625 non-ST-elevation ACS (NSTE-ACS)). Of these cases, 65.1% underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and 2.5% coronary artery bypass graft (CABG). Post-discharge mortality was recorded for up to two years. From over 50 potential predictor variables a new risk score for one-year mortality was developed using forward stepwise Cox regression, and examined for goodness-of-fit, discriminatory power, and external validation.

Results: A total of 407 patients (3.9%) died within one year of discharge. We identified 12 highly significant independent predictors of mortality (in order of predictive strength): age, lower ejection fraction, poorer EQ-5D quality of life, elevated serum creatinine, in-hospital cardiac complications, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, elevated blood glucose, male gender, no PCI/CABG after NSTE-ACS, low hemoglobin, peripheral artery disease, on diuretics at discharge. When combined into a new risk score excellent discrimination was achieved (c-statistic=0.81) and this was also validated on a large similar cohort (9907 patients) in Asia (c=0.78). For both STEMI and NSTE-ACS there was a steep gradient in one-year mortality ranging from 0.5% in the lowest quintile to 18.2% in the highest decile. NSTE-ACS contributes over twice as many high-risk patients as STEMI.

Conclusions: Post-discharge mortality for ACS patients remains of concern. Our new user-friendly risk score available on www.acsrisk.org can readily identify who is at high risk.

Keywords: Acute coronary syndrome; hospital discharge; mortality; prognostic model; risk score.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acute Coronary Syndrome / mortality*
  • Acute Coronary Syndrome / surgery
  • Coronary Artery Bypass / mortality
  • Decision Support Techniques*
  • Female
  • Fibrinolytic Agents / therapeutic use
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Patient Discharge / statistics & numerical data
  • Percutaneous Coronary Intervention / mortality
  • Proportional Hazards Models
  • Prospective Studies
  • Risk Assessment / methods
  • Risk Factors

Substances

  • Fibrinolytic Agents

Associated data

  • ClinicalTrials.gov/NCT01171404