Clinical picture, management and risk stratification in patients with cardiogenic shock: does gender matter?

BACKGROUND: Early recognition and risk stratification are crucial in cardiogenic shock (CS). A lower adherence to recommendations has been described in women with cardiovascular diseases. Little information exists about disparities in clinical picture, management and performance of risk stratification tools according to gender in patients with CS. METHODS: Data from the multicenter Red-Shock registry were used. All consecutive patients with CS were included. Both CardShock and IABP-SHOCK II risk scores were calculated. The primary end-point was in-hospital mortality. The discriminative ability of both scores according to gender was assessed by binary logistic regression, calculating Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and the corresponding area under the curve (AUC). RESULTS: A total of 793 patients were included, of whom 222 (28%) were female. Women were significantly older and had a lower proportion of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and prior myocardial infarction. CS was less often related to acute coronary syndromes (ACS) in women. The use of vasoactive drugs, renal replacement therapy, invasive ventilation, therapeutic hypothermia and mechanical circulatory support was similar between both groups. In-hospital mortality was 346/793 (43.6%). Mortality was not significantly different according to gender (p = 0.194). Cardshock risk score showed a good ability for predicting in-hospital mortality both in man (AUC 0.69) and women (AUC 0.735). Likewise, the IABP-II successfully predicted in-hospital mortality in both groups (man: AUC 0.693; women: AUC 0.722). CONCLUSIONS: No significant differences were observed regarding management and in-hospital mortality according to gender. Both the CardShock and IABP-II risk scores depicted a good ability for predicting mortality also in women with CS.