Higher frailty linked to hospital deaths on heart-lung support
Deaths occurred in 49.3% of hospitalizations with high frailty scores versus 45.6% with low scores among adults on heart-lung support.
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Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Adults with cardiogenic shock, in which the heart cannot pump enough blood, accounted for 34,260 hospitalizations in an observational study of US hospital records from 2016–2022. Their mean age was 55.6 years. All received veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, which pumps blood and adds oxygen outside the body.
Researchers classified 82.0% of hospitalizations as high frailty using a validated score based on billing records. Hospital deaths occurred in 49.3% of high-frailty hospitalizations versus 45.6% of low-frailty hospitalizations. High scores remained linked to higher odds of death after adjustment for 24 patient and hospital factors. They were also linked to higher odds of stroke and major bleeding, lower odds of discharge home, longer hospital stays and higher costs.
Why it matters
Frailty assessment, typically used in older populations, may help guide intensive-support decisions in younger adults as well. The authors said frailty should inform individualized decisions, not rule out eligibility.
Caveats
Hospital billing records supplied the frailty measure, and differences in illness severity may have contributed to the associations despite adjustment. The conference abstract covered selected support recipients, excluding people with shock after heart surgery or a prior heart transplant.
The paper
Henry Ford St. John
AHA Scientific Sessions 2026 Abstract, Nov 2, 2026
Presented at AHA Scientific Sessions 2026, abstract 10030
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