Influenza Vaccine May Help Keep Heart Failure Patients Out of Hospital

HealthDay News — Receipt of influenza vaccination may reduce heart failure patients’ risk of hospitalization, according to findings presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s Heart Failure 2016, held from May 21 to 24 in Florence, Italy.

Kazem Rahimi, MD, deputy director of the George Institute for Global Health at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and colleagues analyzed data from 59,202 heart failure patients in the United Kingdom.

The researchers found that influenza vaccination was associated with a 30% lower risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular diseases, a 16% lower risk of hospitalization for respiratory infections, and a 4% lower risk of hospitalization for any reason up to 300 days after vaccination.

“Uptake of the flu vaccination in heart failure patients is relatively low, ranging from less than 20 percent in low- and middle-income countries to 50 to 70% in high-income countries like the United Kingdom. This may partly be because there is no strong evidence to support the recommendation in these patients,” Rahimi said in a European Society of Cardiology news release. “[These study] findings provide further evidence that there are likely worthwhile benefits.”

Reference

Flu jab associated with fewer hospitalizations in patients with heart failure [news release]. Florence, Italy: European Society of Cardiology World Congress on Acute Heart Failure; May 23, 2016.