HYPERKALAEMIA affected 28% of patients with heart failure in a Malaysian study, with chronic kidney disease emerging as a significant associated risk factor, while prescriptions for commonly used heart failure medications showed no significant association with elevated potassium levels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The findings highlighted the importance of identifying patients at increased risk of hyperkalaemia and monitoring serum potassium concentrations during heart failure management.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hyperkalaemia Prevalence in Heart Failure\u00a0<\/p>\n
Researchers conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional study at Hospital UiTM Sungai Buloh, Malaysia, to investigate hyperkalaemia frequency, heart failure medication prescribing patterns, and associated risk factors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The study included 320 patients with heart failure who attended the hospital\u2019s heart failure clinic between January 2023 and June 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Medical records were reviewed to obtain demographic information, comorbidities, prescribed pharmacotherapies, and serum potassium measurements assessed 6\u20138 weeks after treatment initiation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hyperkalaemia was defined as a serum potassium concentration exceeding 5.0 mmol\/L.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Overall, hyperkalaemia was identified in 28.0% of patients, indicating that elevated potassium levels were common within the study population.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kidney Disease Associated with Increased Hyperkalaemia Risk\u00a0<\/p>\n
Researchers examined associations between hyperkalaemia and prescriptions for renin\u2013angiotensin\u2013aldosterone system inhibitors (RAASi) and mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRA).\u00a0<\/p>\n
RAASi were prescribed to 86.9% of patients, while 75.3% received MRA therapy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite these prescribing rates, neither medication category demonstrated a statistically significant association with hyperkalaemia in the study population.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, underlying chronic kidney disease was significantly associated with hyperkalaemia (p=0.001).\u00a0<\/p>\n
A significant association was also observed among patients with both chronic kidney disease and Type 2 diabetes (p=0.003).\u00a0<\/p>\n
These findings suggested that underlying comorbidities, particularly impaired kidney function, were important considerations when assessing hyperkalaemia risk in patients receiving heart failure treatment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Potassium Monitoring Remains Essential in High-Risk Patients\u00a0<\/p>\n
The study highlighted the clinical relevance of hyperkalaemia among patients with heart failure, particularly those with concurrent chronic kidney disease.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although renin\u2013angiotensin\u2013aldosterone system inhibitors and mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists were frequently prescribed, their use was not significantly associated with hyperkalaemia in this cohort.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, the retrospective, cross-sectional design did not establish causal relationships or exclude potential medication-related risks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The researchers concluded that close monitoring of serum potassium concentrations is warranted in patients at increased risk, particularly those with underlying chronic kidney disease.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These findings may help inform risk assessment and monitoring strategies in heart failure clinics, while providing additional evidence from a Malaysian clinical population.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reference\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zulkifly HH et al. Assessing the incidence and associated factors of hyperkalemia among heart failure patients in Hospital UiTM Sungai Buloh. Int J Cardi. 2026\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HYPERKALAEMIA affected 28% of patients with heart failure in a Malaysian study, with chronic kidney disease emerging as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[134,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-647371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}