LAS VEGAS – Ah, Christmas. The lights, the good cheer, the presents under the tree. And something extra: a 14% bump in heart failure hospitalizations in the days that follow.
“Holiday heart” is a real phenomenon among patients with heart failure, Dr. Mahek Shah reported at the annual meeting of the Heart Failure Society of America.
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Overindulgence may wreak havoc with extracellular fluid volume.
He and his coinvestigators retrospectively analyzed the records of all 22,728 patients admitted for heart failure to Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia in a recent 10-year period. The purpose was to learn if admission rates climbed in conjunction with national holidays, as has previously been reported for acute MI.
Sure enough, the mean daily admission rate for heart failure was 6.5 cases per day for Dec. 26-29, compared with 5.7 per day during the rest of the month. That’s a 14% jump.
Similarly, the mean daily heart failure admission rate was 11.4% greater during July 5-8 than in the rest of July, and 11% higher on the 4 days following Super Bowl Sunday than the rest of that month. Daily admissions rose by 3.3% on Jan. 2-5, compared with the rest of January, and by 2% on the 4 days following Thanksgiving, compared with the daily average for the rest of November, according to Dr. Shah of Einstein Medical Center.
Mean lengths of stay, however, weren’t significantly different for patients admitted in the 4 days post holiday than in the rest of the month, he added.
Dr. Shah offered two hypotheses for the holiday heart hospitalization phenomenon that he and his colleagues documented. One, it’s likely that many heart failure patients – just like the rest of America – overindulge in rich, salty foods at holiday celebrations that, in the case of individuals with heart failure, wreaks havoc with their extracellular fluid volume. Second, some heart failure patients probably delay in seeking medical care at holiday time because they don’t want to miss or spoil the party.
Dr. Shah reported having no financial conflicts regarding this study.