SNOWMASS, COLO. – Many of the abundant missed opportunities to optimize pharmacotherapy for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction revolve around not getting fully on board with the guideline-directed medical therapy shown to be highly effective at improving clinical outcomes, Akshay S. Desai, MD, asserted at the Annual Cardiovascular Conference at Snowmass sponsored by the American College of Cardiology.
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Dr. Akshay S. Desai
“If you take nothing else away from this talk, is really quite profound,” declared Dr. Desai, director of the cardiomyopathy and heart failure program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, Boston.
He highlighted five common traps or pitfalls for physicians with regard to medical therapy of patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF):
Underutilization of guideline-directed medical therapy
The current ACC/American Heart Association/Heart Failure Society of America guidelines on heart failure management (Circulation. 2017 Aug 8;136[6]:e137-61) reflect 20 years of impressive progress in improving heart failure outcomes through the use of increasingly effective guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT). The magnitude of this improvement was nicely captured in a meta-analysis of 57 randomized controlled trials published during 1987-2015. The meta-analysis showed that, although ACE inhibitor therapy alone had no significant impact on all-cause mortality compared to placebo in patients with HFrEF, the sequential addition of guideline-directed drugs conferred stepwise improvements in survival. This approach culminated in a 56% reduction in all-cause mortality with the combination of an ACE inhibitor, beta-blocker, and mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist (MRA), compared with placebo, and a 63% reduction with an angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitor (ARNI), beta-blocker, and MRA (Circ Heart Fail. 2017 Jan;10(1). pii: e003529).
Moreover, the benefits of contemporary GDMT extend beyond reductions in all-cause mortality, death due to heart failure, and heart failure–related hospitalizations into areas where one wouldn’t necessarily have expected to see much benefit. For example, an analysis of data on more than 40,000 HFrEF patients in 12 clinical trials showed a sharp decline in the rate of sudden death over the years as new agents were incorporated into GDMT. The cumulative incidence of sudden death within 90 days after randomization plunged from 2.4% in the earliest trial to 1.0% in the most recent one (N Engl J Med. 2017 Jul 6;377[1]:41-51).
“We’re at the point where we now question whether routine use of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators in primary prevention patients with nonischemic heart failure is really worthwhile on the backdrop of effective medical therapy,” Dr. Desai observed.
But there’s a problem: “We don’t do a great job with GDMT, even with this incredible evidence base that we have,” the cardiologist said.
He cited a report from the CHAMP-HF registry that scrutinized the use of GDMT in more than 3,500 ambulatory HFrEF patients in 150 U.S. primary care and cardiology practices. It found that 67% of patients deemed eligible for an MRA weren’t on one. Neither were 33% with no contraindications to beta-blocker therapy and 27% who were eligible for an ACE inhibitor, angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB), or ARNI (J Am Coll Cardiol. 2018 Jul 24;72[4]:351-66).
“This highlights a huge opportunity for further guideline-directed optimization of therapy,” he said.
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