The following is a summary of “Impact of body mass index in patients with tricuspid regurgitation after transcatheter edge-to-edge repair,” published in the October 2023 issue of Cardiology by Vogelhuber et al.

Obesity and underweight are known to worsen outcomes in patients with cardiovascular disease. They examined 211 consecutive individuals (mean age 78.3 ± 7.2 years, 55.5% female, median EuroSCORE II 9.6 ± 6.7) with tricuspid regurgitation who underwent Transcatheter Edge-to-Edge Repair (TEER) (June 2015-May 2021). Patients enrolled in a single-center registry were analyzed retrospectively. Stratification based on body mass index (BMI) divided patients into four categories: BMI < 20 kg/m² (underweight), BMI 20.0 to < 25.0 kg/m² (average weight), BMI 25.0 to > 30.0 kg/m² (overweight), and BMI ≥ 30 kg/m² (obese).

The results showed that Kaplan–Meier survival curves indicated lower survival rates for underweight and obese individuals, while average and overweight patients showed comparable outcomes (global log-rank test, P< 0.01). Malnourished patients exhibited significantly higher cardiovascular death rates than other groups (24.1% vs. 7.0% vs. 6.3% vs. 6.4%; P<0.01). There were similar incidences of bleeding, stroke, and myocardial infarction. Multivariable Cox regression analysis (adjusted for age, gender, coronary artery disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion, left-ventricular ejection fraction) confirmed underweight (HR 3.88; 95% CI 1.64–7.66; P<0.01) and obesity (HR 3.24; 95% CI 1.37–9.16; P<0.01) as independent risk factors for 1-year all-cause mortality.

They concluded that obese and underweight patients undergoing TEER have higher 1-year mortality than average-weight and overweight patients.

Source: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00392-023-02312-2