STOCKHOLM — Body temperature gauged prognosis in a retrospective analysis of patients hospitalized for heart failure.
Patients hospitalized for heart failure with hypothermia (a body temperature of 96.5°F or less) at admission were fourfold more likely to die during follow-up as were normathermic patients, Mihai Gheorghiade, M.D., said at the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology.
“This is the first report [of the link with hypothermia], so it needs validation before making any conclusion that temperature is a prognostic factor,” said Dr. Gheorghiade, professor of medicine at Northwestern University, Chicago.
The correlation was made by reviewing data collected in a study designed to test the safety and efficacy of tolvaptan, an oral vasopressin receptor antagonist, in patients with systolic dysfunction who were hospitalized for worsening heart failure. Of 319 patients enrolled, body temperature readings on admission were available for 315.
Of those patients, 32 had hypothermia. At 60 days, mortality was 9.4% in patients with hypothermia and 5.9% in those with normothermia. After adjustment for baseline differences in blood urea nitrogen, age, and tolvaptan treatment, the patients with hypothermia were 3.9 times more likely to die.
In clinical trials, body temperature should be measured at admission and daily to correlate temperature and heart failure status, Dr. Gheorghiade said.