The effect of hypertension on the prognosis of acute aortic dissection

Objective To investigate the clinical characteristics and prognosis of patients with acute aortic dissection (AAD) and hypertension, and explore other related prognostic factors in AAD. Methods The present study enrolled consecutive patients diagnosed with AAD who were admitted to Peking University People's Hospital between January 2000 to December 2015. Patients diagnosed with AAD by CT angiography, aortography or magnetic resonance imaging within 14 days of onset were included. Patients with infectious diseases, haematological diseases, malignancies, autoimmune diseases and patients without clearly clinical diagnosis or incomplete data were excluded. The patients were initially divided into two groups based on their history of hypertension, and their clinical characteristics were compared and analyzed. We further divided AAD patients into survival group and death group according to their in-patient outcomes, and factors related to their prognoses were analyzed. Logistic regression analysis was applied to analyze the independent risk factors related to hospital death in AAD patients with P<0.05 as the significant value. Results The hypertensive group contained 237/346 cases included (68.45%), patients in this group were generally older than their non-hypertensive counterparts, accompanied by increased prevalence of comorbidities (coronary heart diseases or diabetes) and a statistical significant elevated admission blood pressures (systolic and diastolic, P 0.05). Hypertensive patients were less likely to receive surgical treatment compared with those without hypertension(P 0.05). Further logistic regression analysis revealed the presence of hypertension did not independently predict in-hospital mortality of AAD patients. Factors such as age, Stanford classification of the AAD, NLR and platelet counts were found to have independent predictive values for in-hospital mortality (P<0.05). Conclusion AAD patients with hypertension are generally older, have more comorbidities such as coronary heart diseases and diabetes. The presence of hypertension itself is not directly associated with in-hospital mortality in AAD patients, while the Stanford classification, age, NLR and platelet counts are independent risk predictors. Key words: Hypertension; Acute aortic dissection; Prognosis; Neutrophil to Lymphocyte ratio; Platelet counts