Underweight people 5 times more likely to die after common heart problems treatment

Washington: Having an ideal body weight is really important as a study has recently warned that underweight people are five times more likely to die after common heart problems treatments.

According to researchers, underweight people are more likely to have the highest mortality, length of stay and rate of readmission to the hospital within 30 days for those undergoing cardiac catheterisation. Lead author Dr Afnan Tariq from Lenox Hill Hospital, New York, USA said that elevated Body Mass Index (BMI) is a risk factor for coronary artery disease, yet studies have shown that overweight and obese patients actually have fewer complications and better clinical outcomes after revascularisation using percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) - a phenomenon dubbed the obesity paradox.

They examined the association of BMI with in-hospital mortality, cost of care, length of stay and rate of readmission within 30 days in patients undergoing cardiac catheterisation (coronary angiography) in 2013 in a nationally representative cohort. About 1,035,727 patients underwent cardiac catheterisation, of which 42 percent also received PCI with a stent or balloon.

Despite the low percentage of cardiac catheterisations and lower rate of PCI compared to normal and overweight BMI groups, underweight patients were over three times more likely to die after cardiac catheterisation than morbidly obese patients and five times more likely to die than obese patients

Interestingly, despite the extreme BMI, morbidly obese patients had a lower mortality rate than normal weight patients and obese patients had the lowest mortality of all groups undergoing cardiac catheterisation. Length of stay for underweight patients was more than double that of normal weight patients (10.5 days versus 5.1 days).

After adjustment for co-morbidities, underweight patients were 18 percent more likely than normal weight patients to be readmitted within 30 days, while morbidly obese patients were 8.2 percent less likely to be readmitted within 30 days. The researchers concluded that lower BMI group had worse outcomes across the board, including readmission, length of stay, cost, and mortality.