Dapagliflozin for Cardio-renal Protection After ICU Discharge

Plain-language summary

Several millions of patients are admitted to ICUs in Europe or USA each year. We and others, have shown that patients discharged from intensive care units (ICU) have a high incidence of cardiovascular and/or renal events and high mortality rate (22%) during the year following ICU discharge. Furthermore, a very recent meta-analysis found an excess hazard of late cardiovascular events which persists for at least 5 years following hospital discharge in sepsis survivors. Hence, many international ICU societies recommended investigating and improving post-ICU outcome with scarce guidance. We demonstrated that the proportion of ICU patients dying or presenting cardiovascular events within the year following ICU discharge is reported \~25% \[2\], reaching \~40% in some studies when considering patients with acute kidney injury (AKI). Plasma biomarkers at ICU discharge have good predictive value and patients with increased kidney or cardiovascular biomarkers display high risk of such events. In addition, we and others demonstrated that AKI or sub-AKI (patient not meeting the AKI definition but with an increased kidney related biomarker) could induce remote cardio-vascular injury and fibrosis, which may be involved in the poor long-term prognosis of ICU-acquired AKI. We hypothesize that strategy that prevent worsening in cardiovascular and/or renal injuries and/or in cardiovascular consequences of sub-AKI and AKI after ICU discharge improve long-term outcomes in ICU survivors. SGLT2 inhibitors are widely recognized as key drugs to protect the kidney and/or the myocardium in chronic diseases such as diabetes or heart failure. Cardio protective effect of SGLT2 inhibitors is optimal in patients with higher cardiac biomarker.

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