Weekend versus weekday admission and clinical outcomes in heart failure patients with and without atrial fibrillation in Taiwan.

Purpose We conduct this study to explore the associations of weekend and weekdays admission with the clinical events among heart failure (HF) patients with and without comorbid atrial fibrillation (AF). Methods In this study, we recruited 57919 HF patients without AF hospitalized in weekends and 57919 HF patients without AF hospitalized in weekdays. There were 21467 and 21467 HF patients with AF admisson in weekends and weekdays, respectively. The outcomes of interest included all-cause mortality, CV death (ICD-9-CM 390-459), and heart failure recurrence. Cox proportional hazard regression model was applied to estimate the hazard ratio. Variables found to be statistically significant in a univariable Cox proportional hazard regression model were further examined in a multivariable Cox proportional hazard regression model. The cumulative incidence curves were obtained by the Kaplan-Meier method and assessed by the Log-rank test. Results HF patients with AF and hospitalized in weekends had the highest incidence rates of rehospitalization due to HF (233.8 per1000 person-years), and CV death (23.9 per 1000 person-years) among four groups. Kaplan-Meier method shows that HF patients with AF had the higher cumulative incidence of HF recurrence than that of patients without AF. Conclusion HF patients with AF and hospitalized in weekends are at highest risk of HF recurrence among these four groups.