ATLANTA -- Among the myriad cardiovascular problems faced by patients with rheumatoid arthritis is a high rate of heart failure -- which often required lengthy hospitalizations, researchers reported here.
A matched cohort study of more than 500 patients, found those with RA had 20% more hospitalizations for heart failure than patients who had heart failure alone (HR 1.2, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.5, P=0.038), according to Cynthia Crowson, PhD, and colleagues from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and colleagues.
In addition, the length of heart failure hospitalization for RA patients was a mean of 0.66 days longer than for patients without arthritis (P=0.025).
"We wanted to compare patients with rheumatoid arthritis with the larger heart failure population, because heart failure is becoming an epidemic in this country and is associated with high hospital costs," Crowson told MedPage Today in a poster session at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/ACR/23240
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