WEDNESDAY, Sept. 13 (HealthDay News) -- In patients admitted with acute heart failure, a two-minute assessment of oxygen saturation and systolic blood pressure allows for accurate risk stratification, according to research presented this week at the Heart Failure Society of America's 10th annual scientific meeting, in Seattle.

Olga Milo-Cotter, M.D., of the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., and colleagues followed 340 acute heart failure patients for six months.

The researchers found that patients with low oxygen saturation (less than 90 percent) had higher rates of recurrent heart failure than patients with higher saturation at one month (53 percent versus 27 percent) and six months (57 percent versus 31 percent), and a higher rates of one-month and six-month mortality (12 percent versus 4 percent and 17 percent versus 7 percent, respectively). They found that systolic blood pressure less than 120 mmHg was not associated with a significant increase in recurrent heart failure but was associated with an increase in mortality at one and six months. Patients who had low oxygen saturation and systolic blood pressure had a poor prognosis: recurrent heart failure at one and six months (72 percent) and death at one and six months (26 and 32 percent, respectively).

"The prognosis of patients who sustain frank respiratory (need for mechanical ventilation) or circulatory failure (need for IV pressors) is especially dismal," the authors concluded.

Abstract