Echocardiographic algorithms for admission and predischarge prediction of mortality in acute myocardial infarction

To develop improved prognostic algorithms for routine bedside use in acute myocardial infarction (AMI), the prognostic value concerning 2- and 12-month mortality of an early (within 72 hours after AMI) resting echocardiogram was defined in 201 consecutive patients. The relation between (1) the clinical variables (age, sex, prior and repeat AMI, arrhythmias, cardiac arrest, early [less than 72 hours after AMI] and late heart failure, early and maximal in-hospital Killip class, and maximal creatine kinase-MB isoenzyme), (2) early myocardial performance by echocardiography, and (3) mortality was characterized by Kaplan-Meier survival curves and receiver-operating characteristic curves based on Cox regression model. Only age and clinical heart failure in terms of the maximal in-hospital Killip class had independent predictive value of death (p less than 0.05) when an early echocardiographic estimate of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was included in the multivariate statistical models. The following 2 optimized algorithms for admission and predischarge calculation of risk of mortality at 2 and 12 months were developed based on the Cox model, using combinations of age, maximal Killip class and early echocardiographic LVEF: mortality at 2 months = 1 - exp - [0.051 x exp [0.044 x (age -60) - (0.117 x (LVEF - 40)]]; and mortality at 1 year = 1 - exp - [0.101 x exp [0.408 x (maxKillip - 1) - (0.061 x (LVEF - 40)]]. Discriminative power for prediction of mortality of the predischarge algorithm in an independent population of 195 patients 5 days after AMI compared favorably with that obtained in the original population, confirming the validity of the proposed method of prognostication.