Consequences of Anemia in Patients with Chronic Heart Failure

Background: Heart failure (HF) is recognized as a structural and functional heart complication. Many studies have revealed that anemia plays an ambiguous role in this complication and can be a significant prognostic parameter in HF. In our trial, for clarification of this issue, the relationship between HF and anemia was studied. Methods: In this case-control study, 273 patients admitted to the CCU and post-CCU wards of Dezful Hospital, who were selected by the available sampling method, were studied. In this investigation, among 273 patients with HF, hematological, biochemical, and heart functional parameters were assessed and compared with 89 healthy volunteers. Consequently, the correlation between hematological parameters and functional heart parameters in the patients was evaluated via Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Results: The study subjects were tried to have similar conditions regarding their demographic characteristics. The mean age of the included participants was 53.68 ± 2.17 years. Our data revealed that HF occurs mainly at the age of 50 to 70 years, and patients had an 8.7% mortality risk. Hematocrit (HCT) had a significant reduction in the HF group in comparison to the normal range (P-value < 0.05), and HCT level in healthy subjects (P-value 0.02). Further, anemia is positively correlated with HF mortality rate and severity of HF indices in patients (P-value = 0.01). Conclusions: The results of our study, consistent with other previous studies, showed that HF patients have a low HCT level, and this reduction is associated with a marked decline in health status indices in HF patients. Also, our results revealed that patients with the lowest level of HCT are at high risk for HF symptoms.