Clinical Trial Details
— Status: Recruiting
Administrative data
| NCT number |
NCT04637776 |
| Other study ID # |
1R01HL151431 |
| Secondary ID |
|
| Status |
Recruiting |
| Phase |
|
| First received |
|
| Last updated |
|
| Start date |
January 10, 2021 |
| Est. completion date |
May 30, 2024 |
Study information
| Verified date |
March 2024 |
| Source |
Washington University School of Medicine |
| Contact |
Kenneth E Freedland, PhD |
| Phone |
314-286-1311 |
| Email |
freedlak[@]wustl.edu |
| Is FDA regulated |
No |
| Health authority |
|
| Study type |
Observational
|
Clinical Trial Summary
Heart failure (HF) is a common and debilitating chronic disease with a poor prognosis. Many
patients with HFhave psychiatric problems such as depression and other medical disorders such
as lung or kidney disease.This study will examine the effects that these psychiatric and
medical disorders have on HF outcomes.
Description:
Approximately 6.2 million Americans have heart failure (HF) and the prevalence is increasing
rapidly. HF is a common cause of hospitalization and mortality in older adults, and the cost
of hospital care for HF is skyrocketing. One reason why HF is so burdensome and costly is
that it is often complicated by cardiovascular and noncardiovascular comorbidities,
especially in older patients. Psychiatric and medical disorders that are risk factors for
incident HF persist after HF has developed, and additional comorbidities accumulate as
patients with HF grow older. Thus, HF is embedded within a larger pattern of multimorbidity.
Unfortunately, most trials of HF therapies as well as many other studies of HF have excluded
patients with complex psychiatric and medical comorbidities or severe cognitive impairment.
This has left large gaps in research on the care of older adults with HF. In addition,
research on socioeconomic risk factors and health disparities has not been integrated with
research on multimorbidity in HF. Heart failure is only one of multiple challenges facing
patients with multimorbidity, stressful socioeconomic circumstances, and psychosocial
problems, but the fragmentation of research on HF has left us with little understanding of
patients with complex psychosocial problems. The purpose of this study is to identify
combinations of comorbidities and health disparities may affect HF outcomes and require
different mixtures of medical, psychological, and social services to address. It will
encompass both psychiatric and medical comorbidities but will emphasize the role of
psychiatric comorbidities. Syndemics theory is a useful framework for studying this type of
psychosocial and medical complexity. Syndemics, also known as synergistic epidemics, occur
when there are adverse interactions between prevalent disorders that concentrate in
populations that are vulnerable due to adverse socioeconomic or environmental conditions. The
syndemics framework has yielded important insights into a number of other disorders, but it
has not been used to study the complex psychosocial problems of patients with HF. To our
knowledge, this will be the first study of the syndemics of psychiatric and medical
comorbidities in heart failure. The multimorbidity framework is an alternative approach for
investigating the effects of multiple comorbidities on health outcomes. The specific aims of
the study are: 1) to determine the coprevalence of major psychiatric and medical
comorbidities in patients with HF (n=535); 2) to determine whether coprevalent comorbidities
have synergistic effects on all-cause readmission and mortality risks, heart failure
self-care, and perceived global health; 3) to identify vulnerable subpopulations of patients
with HF who have higher coprevalences of syndemic comorbidities compared to less vulnerable
subpopulations; 4) to determine the extent to which syndemic comorbidities explain adverse HF
outcomes (readmissions and mortality, poor self-care, and poor perceived health) in
vulnerable subgroups of patients with HF; and 5) to determine the effects of multimorbidity
on readmissions, mortality risk, self-care, and quality of life.