Prognostic value of anemia in predicting sudden death of patients with diastolic heart failure.

It has been reported that anemia is a prognostic predictor in patients with diastolic heart failure (DHF), however, the relationship between anemia and sudden death in those patients is still unclear. We prospectively studied 357 stable DHF patients and the proportion of anemic patients was 39% of the study population. During the mean follow-up period of 3.6+/-1.7 years, 30 (8.4%) patients died suddenly. Importantly, the Cox proportional-hazards regression analysis showed that lower hemoglobin level was significantly associated with the development of sudden death in the multivariate model (P<0.001). Anemia may be an important therapeutic target to reduce sudden death in DHF patients.