The correlation between heart failure and the risk of ischemic colitis: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Ischemic colitis is a relatively common gastrointestinal disease caused by hypoperfusion of the colon. Recently, studies have suggested an association between heart failure (HF) and ischemic colitis, even though the magnitude of the reported association varied considerably across the studies. This systematic review and meta-analysis were performed to comprehensively explore whether patients with HF are at a higher risk of ischemic colitis compared with individuals without HF by combining the results of all available observational studies.

Systematic literature review was performed using EMBASE, MEDLINE and Google Scholar database up to May 2020. Eligible studies could be any observational ones that evaluated whether patients with HF have a higher risk of ischemic colitis than individuals without HF. Point estimates and standard errors from each eligible study were combined together using the generic inverse variance method of DerSimonian and Laird.

The systematic review identified 7 case-control studies and 1 cross-sectional study. The pooled analysis found that patients with HF had a significantly higher risk of ischemic colitis with the pooled odds ratio of 3.42 (95% confidence interval 1.49-7.82; I² 96%). Funnel plot was relatively symmetric and was not suggestive of presence of publication bias.

A significantly increased risk of ischemic colitis among patients with HF was demonstrated in this systematic review and meta-analysis.