Introduction
Improved survival following myocardial infarction (MI) has encouraged interest in identifying factors that are associated with subsequent cardiovascular (CV) events.1 Clinicians require evidence about health-related quality of life (HRQoL) to inform clinical decisions for patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD). Generic tools such as the EuroQol-5 dimension (EQ-5D)2 can provide useful insights into a patient’s well-being and prognosis, including after MI, beyond those offered by disease-specific tools, such as the Seattle Angina Questionnaire.2 3
A systematic review of HRQoL for patients with stable CAD, 1–3 years after MI,4 found major issues with published studies, in that they did not report the approach to assessing HRQoL,5–7 followed up patients for short time periods (up to 1 year post-MI)5–10 and included small samples of patients (≤2000),6 7 9 10 recruited from few countries.7–11 Munyombwe et al identified some factors associated with lower HRQoL, including advancing age and presentation with non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI).5 Pocock et al found that EQ-5D index score at hospital discharge following MI was an independent predictor of subsequent outcomes.12 13 While these previous studies showed that the EQ-5D can report HRQoL in populations with stable CAD, little research has assessed whether HRQoL predicts subsequent clinical outcomes and resource use.
This article reports HRQoL for patients enrolled 1–3 years post-MI in a prospective, global registry. We aimed to: (1) assess the association of patient characteristics with HRQoL; (2) estimate the association of HRQoL with resource use, CV events and all-cause death; and (3) assess the effect of CV events on change in HRQoL between enrolment and 1-year’s follow-up.