• Joachim Wilhelm, Stefan Hettwer, Markus Schuermann, Silke Bagger, Franziska Gerhardt, Sandra Mundt, Susanne Muschik, Julia Zimmermann, Sebastian Bubel, Mroawan Amoury, Thomas Kloess, Rainer Finke, Harald Loppnow, Ursula Mueller-Werdan, Henning Ebelt, and Karl Werdan.
• Department of Medicine III, University Hospital Halle (Saale), Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Ernst-Grube-Strasse 40, 06120, Halle (Saale), Germany, joachim.wilhelm@uk-halle.de.
• Clin Res Cardiol. 2013 Oct 1;102(10):735-44.

IntroductionIn sepsis, the reduced systemic vascular resistance (SVR) can lead to a compensatory increase in cardiac output (CO). This may mimic a normal cardiac function although there is already a sepsis-induced myocardial depression. On a cohort of patients with septic multi-organ dysfunction syndrome, we have recently developed a method to correlate the actual CO to the afterload (estimated by SVR) and introduced the parameter "afterload-related cardiac performance" (ACP), which indicates if the rise of CO is adequate for the particular SVR. In this present study it was to be investigated, if ACP can reveal septic cardiomyopathy in patients with community-acquired sepsis in the early state soon after admission to the emergency department (ED), and if there is a prognostic relevance of septic cardiomyopathy defined by ACP. Results were compared to cardiac index (CI) and cardiac power index (CPI).MethodsAdults presenting at the ED with sepsis were included. ACP, CI and CPI were calculated at the time of admission, after 24, and 72 h. They were correlated to severity of disease and the prognostic values were analyzed.ResultsA total of 141 patients were included. Only ACP was significantly influenced by severity of sepsis, whereas CI and CPI were not. ACP was the only hemodynamic parameter predicting mortality: nonsurvivors had lower ACP values at the time of admission to the ED (66.9 vs. 88.9 %, p < 0.05) and ACP predicted non-survival with an AUC value of 0.72, p = 0.003. Cardiac impairment defined by an ACP value of 80 % or below determined worse prognosis.ConclusionsSeptic cardiomyopathy occurs already at the early stage of disease and is of prognostic relevance. It might be recognized best, if cardiac function is correlated to afterload.

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