After being hospitalized for heart failure, 63% of adults over 65 had reduced kidney function after being discharged, according to a new study from Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital.
The research, published May 29 in JAMA Cardiology, also found that around one year after being discharged from a heart failure hospitalization incident that 6% had progressed to dialysis for kidney failure and another 7% were either on dialysis or had progressed to end stage kidney disease.
For the study, experts analyzed data from 85,298 patients over the age of 65 who were hospitalized with heart failure between 2021 and 2024 across 372 U.S.-based sites.
"We know that heart and kidney health are highly interconnected, but management of heart and kidney disease remains relatively siloed, and kidney health often isn’t prioritized in patients with heart disease until advanced stages," lead author of the study, John Ostrominski, MD, a fellow in Cardiovascular Medicine and Obesity Medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital stated in a news release shared with Becker's.
While the link between heart and kidney health has been known, Dr. Ostrominski stressed that the importance emerging from this study is "that this research emphasizes the scope of the problem and gives us information we can act upon to directly improve clinical outcomes in patients with heart failure," he said.