Background: The PARADIGM-HF trial showed that sacubitril-valsartan - an angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitor (ARNI) - is more effective than enalapril for some patients with heart failure. However, the eligibility of the PARADIGM-HF study to a real-world heart failure population was not well established.
Methods: We made secondary analysis of patients (n = 4872) with heart failure prospectively enrolled in the Swedish Heart Failure Registry from Sahlgrenska University Hospital/Östra Hospital, Sweden during 2005-2016. The eligibility of the PARADIGM-HF trial in the real world was studied based on patients whether they were either fully or partially compatible with the PARADIGM-HF population. Patients were judged to be fully eligible for the PARADIGM-HF trial if they completely met the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and partially eligible if they did not stay on target dose of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEI)/angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB), despite their having been treated with ACEI/ARB for at least 6 months.
Results: Among patients who had heart failure with reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (≤40%) (HFrEF) (n = 2165), 653 (30%) and 958 (44%) patients were fully and partially compatible with PARADIGM-HF criteria, respectively. In both fully and partially eligible groups, patients were more male. Despite those fully eligible patients being younger (77.6 ± 12.7 vs. 84.0 ± 13.7 years) than noneligible patients, they were much older than in the PARADIGM-HF trial. Moreover, those fully eligible patients had lower all-cause mortality compared with both partially and noneligible patients. However, both fully and partially eligible patients had higher all-cause mortality than that in the PARADIGM-HF trial.
Conclusion: In a real-world outpatient clinical setting, around 1/3-1/2 of HFrEF were eligible for treatment of Sac/Val except that they are older, sicker, and carry higher risk for all-cause mortality than the PARADIGM-HF trial population.