Influence on prognosis and prevalence of stress hyperglycemia in a cohort of patients with acute coronary syndrome

OBJECTIVE To demonstrate the prevalence of stress hyperglycemia in a cohort of patients with acute coronary syndrome and to determine the correlation of stress hyperglycemia with death, heart failure and/or left ventricular systolic dysfunction during the intrahospital phase. METHODS A prospective initial cohort study of hospitalized patients with acute coronary syndrome with or without ST segment elevation. The groups were compared to demonstrate the correlation between stress hyperglycemia and cardiovascular events. The chi-square test or Fisher's exact test and student's t-test were used to compare the groups with and without stress hyperglycemia. The variables with p<0.20 in the univariate analysis were submitted to logistic regression. RESULTS In total, 363 patients with an average age of 12.45 ± 62.06 were studied. There was a predominance of males (64.2%). In total, 96 patients (26.4%) presented with stress hyperglycemia. There were no differences between the groups with or without stress hyperglycemia. The area under the ROC curve was 0.67 for the relationship between stress hyperglycemia and the composite outcome heart failure, left ventricular systolic dysfunction or death at the end of the hospital admission. The ROC curve proved that stress hyperglycemia was the predictor of the composite outcome (death, heart failure and/or ventricular dysfunction). The multivariate analysis did not indicate age, stress hyperglycemia or admission heart rate as risk factors. CONCLUSION Stress hyperglycemia was common in the studied sample. In the univariate analysis, the presence of stress hyperglycemia was associated with such events as death, heart failure and/or intrahospital ventricular dysfunction in patients with acute coronary syndrome.