Impact of Sleep Apnea, Daytime Sleepiness, Comorbidities, and Depression on Patients' Heart Failure Health Status

There is a gap in current research on common factors that impact patients with advanced heart failure (HF). The purpose of this secondary data analysis was to explore associations of those factors with three empirically verified measures of HF-related clinical, physical, and mental health status. Baseline data of 198 advanced systolic HF (EF < 40%) patients were analyzed. Patients were 61.6% male, with a mean age of 62.3 (SD = 13.2) years. The multivariable general linear modeling results indicated that patients who had poorer scores on HF-related clinical status were those who had sleep apnea (β = -6.6, p < .05), daytime sleepiness (β = -9.4, p < .01), four or more comorbidities (β = -11.8, p < .001), and depression (β = -18.7, p < .001). Depression was associated with all three measures of HF-related health status. These findings alert nurses to assess for sleep apnea and to use known screening measures for daytime sleepiness, depression, and comorbidities.