Characterizing Changes in Quality of Life and in Older Patients With Acute Decompensated Heart Failure Enrolled in a Rehab Intervention Clinical Trial

Introduction: Older patients with acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) have severely impaired QOL. We recently reported that a novel physical rehab intervention improves QOL. Here we report trajectories of improvement and relationship to participation in a rehab intervention. Methods: Patients with ADHF, regardless of EF and ≥ 60 years old were randomized to either attention control (AC) or rehab intervention (RI). Participants completed the KCCQ, a disease-specific QOL instrument, and 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12), a general QOL instrument composed of a mental and physical composite score, at baseline (inpatient), 1 month and 3 months. Effects of the intervention were assessed using linear mixed effects models including the main effect of intervention, follow-up visit, and interaction term with adjustment for EF category, age, and sex. Results: The REHAB-HF trial enrolled 349 patients with a mean age of 72.7±8.1 years, 52% women and 49% non-white. Baseline KCCQ scores were low for both arms (Figure 1). There was a substantial increase in KCCQ score at 1 month in both arms. However, in contrast to the AC participants who showed no further improvement, RI participants continued to experience an increase in QOL at 3 months creating a significant difference between arms (p< 0.01). Both SF-12 composite scores also increased in both arms at 1 month with continued improvement only in the RI arm; reaching significance for the mental composite at 1 month (50.8±1.1 vs. 46.9±1.1, p < 0.01) and at 3 months (52.7±1.1 vs. 48.2±1.1, p< 0.01). Conclusions: Older patients hospitalized with ADHF have severely impaired disease-specific and general QOL that improves soon after discharge. Patients receiving a novel physical rehabilitation intervention experienced an early benefit in terms of QOL that continued to improve throughout the 3 months trial period. Future studies will help determine if these benefits are sustained with longer term follow-up.