aginghearts Acute Myocardial Infarction, Coronary Intervention, Latest, Shared Decision Making

NSTEMI Decide: A Decision Aid for Older Adults

Many patients hospitalized with non ST-elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) are over age 75. This condition requires major management decisions – most importantly, whether to pursue invasive coronary angiography. However there is limited evidence about the absolute benefits of this procedure for NSTEMI in older adults; available data indicate certain advantages (reduced risk of another MI) but also risks (bleeding, acute kidney injury). Until ongoing trials provide better evidence, patients and clinicians are left with uncertainty around whether invasive coronary angiography is worth pursuing.

Our previous qualitative research revealed that for many older adults hospitalized with NSTEMI, they expressed a desire to be better informed about their options. In the same study, cardiologists asked for a tool that would help them facilitate discussions with these patients. And both groups endorsed the process of shared decision making, which involves the active participation of patients in health care decisions that have multiple acceptable choices.

In this context, we undertook an iterative process to develop a decision aid for invasive coronary angiography in older adults with NSTEMI. We convened both clinical experts (cardiologists, geriatricians, internists, nurses) and patients, in order to review serial drafts of this decision aid for accuracy and comprehension. Our development methods are now published and freely available on medRxiv.

We adapted the final decision aid, NSTEMI Decide, to a mobile health app to maximize ease of use in clinical settings. This can currently be found in Apple’s App Store and downloaded for use on iPhone or iPad (an Android version is also under development). The app is eleven pages long and can be used in English or Spanish. We used data from available trials to provide estimates of the benefits and risks of cardiac catheterization, and created visual representations (with patient input) to help make the provided estimates understandable.

Sample screenshots from NSTEMI Decide.

To our knowledge, this is the first decision aid developed for NSTEMI in older adults. We are currently studying this decision aid prospectively to evaluate feasibility of use in practice, and how it influences patients’ medical knowledge and feelings of self-efficacy. Our hope is that NSTEMI Decide may eventually be widely disseminated to help patients and clinicians better navigate care decisions together.

Sophie Montgomery is a 2nd year medical student at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

John Dodson is a Cardiologist and Associate Professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

 

aginghearts Acute Myocardial Infarction, Coronary Intervention, heart failure, Prevention, Research

Utilization Frailty: a New Approach

 

Dr. Strom
Dr. Martin

Frailty, a disorder of impaired recovery after illness, is closely linked to mortality, but is not accounted for by many large-scale risk adjustment metrics since rigorous measurement of frailty can be time-intensive.  Thus, it is unclear if failure to account for frailty in risk adjustment methods results in undue penalties for hospitals taking care of large numbers of frail individuals.

In a retrospective cohort analysis of 785,127 Medicare Fee-for-Service beneficiaries, Kundi et al. used a claims-based frailty index – known as the Hospital Frailty Risk Score (HFRS) –to overcome the problem of time-intensive frailty measurement. The HFRS is a frailty index tied to clusters of resource utilization developed in a British population and subsequently externally validated in a Canadian population. The HFRS was created to further define patients at risk for poor outcomes by evaluating which administrative billing codes best identify individuals with prolonged hospital stay, increased rates of readmission, and increased rates of mortality.  These billing codes were then tallied to categorize patients into 3 risk groups including low (<5), intermediate (5-15), and high (>15) risk.  The HFRS has subsequently been associated with increased mortality after transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) within the United States.

In the current study, Kundi et al. found that including the HFRS in the risk adjustment model used to calculate risk-standardized 30-day readmission rates (RSRSs) for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia hospitalizations improved prediction of 30-day readmission and short-term mortality compared to use of clinical comorbidities alone.  Across all 3 conditions, addition of the HFRS resulted in a statistically significant (p < 0.001) improvement in prediction of 30-day readmission and short-term mortality after adjusting for age, sex, race, and other comorbidities. These results imply that hospitals caring for high numbers of frail individuals may be disproportionately penalized for the quality of care delivered if frailty is not considered in risk adjustment algorithms, including the one used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Notably, frailty as defined by the HFRS only moderately correlates with two common definitions used by Fried and Rockwood. The HFRS defines frailty according to clusters of increased health resource utilization and adverse outcomes, so-called “utilization frailty,” and thus represents a distinct definition that may correlate only moderately with “syndromic frailty.”  Nevertheless, as this and other papers suggest, this definition identifies a higher risk subpopulation that is relevant to both clinical risk prediction and high healthcare utilization. This classification of frailty is increasingly important as the Medicare population continues to age and hospitals seek to tailor their post-discharge care for these high utilizing individuals.

In summary, the recent publication by Kundi et al. highlights the importance of risk adjustment for “utilization frailty” when assessing risk of short-term readmission and mortality after hospitalizations for three common acute medical conditions.  As detailed in the study, the HFRS could be used to identify and create care plans for patients that are high risk for readmission and mortality. Future research is needed to identify if hospitals that take care of higher numbers of frail patients are disproportionality penalized under the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP). In addition, the role of hospital-based interventions for high-risk frail patients to prevent adverse post-acute care outcomes warrants further inquiry.

By: Lila M Martin, MD, MPH; Jordan B Strom, MD, MSc, FACC, FASE

 

 

 

aginghearts Coronary Intervention, Research

Frailty Matters

dodson%20headshotFrailty (a state of increased vulnerability to physiologic stressors) is common in older adults. Frailty can be measured in several ways, including by a simple test such as walking speed or more thorough criteria. The geriatrics community has long recognized that frailty predicts hospitalization, functional decline, and death. Cardiologists are increasingly recognizing the importance of frailty as well: for example, in predicting outcomes after cardiac surgery and myocardial infarction.

Building on this work, we recently published a paper in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions that highlighted the role of frailty in predicting bleeding among cardiac patients with myocardial infarction in the ACTION registry. While the link may not seem intuitive, there are a number of reasons frailty may confer bleeding risk, including poor vascular integrity, altered hemostatic factors, and issues related to treatments (e.g. overdosing of anticoagulants).

There were several key findings from our work: first, frailty increased bleeding risk by 50%; second, this was only seen in patients undergoing cardiac catheterization; third, the use of strategies that may reduce bleeding (radial access, and proper dosing of anticoagulant medications) was relatively low. The findings in this large cohort largely confirmed what had been shown previously in smaller studies.

I think there are several actionable steps from this work. First, frailty matters – and we should start measuring it.  Our study used a combination of variables abstracted from the medical record, which may have under-detected the true prevalence of frailty. Walking speed, an alternative measure of frailty, can be easily obtained in the hospital on most patients and is easily reproducible. Second, for frail patients, bleeding avoidance strategies are critical. For example, radial access was only used in only 1 in 4 frail patients in our study. Randomized trials in older adults have used higher rates of radial access and have found less bleeding. So this seems to be one relatively straightforward way to improve outcomes in our frail patients.

 

By: John Dodson, MD, MPH

For more information on frailty, a frailty infographic is posted on our “Infographics” page. 

aginghearts Acute Myocardial Infarction, Coronary Intervention, Patient Priorities Care, Shared Decision Making

“I Had No Choice”: Perspectives from Heart Attack Patients on Coronary Interventional Procedures

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Photo taken at Boston Public Garden

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) 2018 Annual Scientific Meeting that was held in Boston, MA this year with the theme centralized around “The Purpose of Longer Lives.” GSA is one of the oldest and largest interdisciplinary organizations that is well-attended nationally by scientists, clinicians, and students who all have one thing in common: a passion for gerontology research.

Aside from connecting with many respectable researchers in the field, I also had the opportunity to present findings from our qualitative research focusing on decisional needs among older adults with cardiovascular disease. Specifically, our study sought to investigate the perspectives of older adults on coronary interventional procedures after their hospitalization for acute myocardial infarction (otherwise known as AMI, or heart attack). In recent decades, older adults have been undergoing more coronary revascularization procedures for AMI (stent placements and coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG)); consequently, procedure-related risks are more common. Moreover, time-sensitive settings during AMI at times do not allow for easy shared decision-making (SDM) discussions with their clinicians to detail these risks. Our study therefore was interested in probing further into AMI patients’ decision-making process – and to identify what factors, exactly, that led them to decide on whether or not to undergo a coronary revascularization procedure.

Based on our preliminary research from 15 patients who had been hospitalized with AMI and discharged home, the main themes that emerged were as follows:

  1. Procedural risks are perceived to be minimal when compared to perceived benefits.

Perceived procedural risks – which were generally described to be stroke, bleeding, and death – were viewed minimally when compared to the benefits. When asked to list the perceived benefits, patients mentioned “living a healthy life,” “no pains,” and “prevention of future heart attacks.”

  1. Some respondents reported that the alternative to a procedure was death.

“I would not have come to the hospital if I wanted to commit suicide,” stated one respondent. While this may be seemingly viewed as a more extreme perception of the alternative to the procedure, this theme was seen across several respondents. For example, another said, “That [turning down the procedure] didn’t enter my mind at all. In fact, I would’ve been dead at this point.” Most participants viewed that they “had no choice,” stating that they would not have been alive without the interventional procedure, and as a result, viewed the procedure was an absolute necessity.

  1. Participants place a high level of trust in their cardiologists when making decisions.

A majority of respondents revealed that faith in the physician was also a major factor contributing to their decision-making process—regardless of how long they have known their cardiologist. While one participant was loyal to their outpatient cardiologist of 28 years, others put an equal amount of trust in the interventional cardiologist whom they met on the same day of the procedure. One respondent, who was unconscious during her episode, stated: “I wasn’t thinking straight, but I had total belief that the doctors were going to take care of me.”

  1. Receiving procedural information, before or after the procedure, could aid in a better overall satisfaction of the experience.

All participants expressed that it was very important for them to understand their heart disease and associated procedures – even if it is after the procedure was completed. This was especially predominant among participants who had an ST-elevation MI (STEMI) who underwent their procedure rapidly. Some suggestions on how this could be achieved include providing a copy of the angiogram results, providing pamphlets and brochures, and sending medical personnel to explain the procedure more in-depth immediately pre-procedure, or during early recovery.

  1. All participants highly value what is perceived to be SDM.

All of our respondents, regardless of whether or not they have received a procedure, expressed a desire to have a discussion with their clinicians regarding their treatment options and the risks and benefits of a procedure.

Based on our findings, SDM has the potential to better overall patient knowledge and satisfaction with care. SDM is probably most applicable in the setting of non-ST segment AMI (NSTEMI) where there is time for more informed discussions. Notably, NSTEMI is the most common AMI presentation among older adults. We believe our work supports the future utilization of SDM in clinical practice, and perhaps, a future tool designed to better expedite the SDM process in the inpatient setting.

 

By: Jenny Summapund, MA

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