Comparative effectiveness of different angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors on the risk of hospitalization in patients with heart failure.

Aims: Existing randomized controlled trials do not address the comparative effectiveness of different angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) on hospitalization due to heart failure (HF)-hospitalization in patients with HF. We sought to examine the effect of four ACEIs on HF-hospitalization in a large real-world HF population.

Methods: The study was a retrospective analysis of a national cohort of patients with HF identified from the Department of Veterans Affairs (TX, USA). A multiple propensity score analysis was used to balance 47 baseline patient characteristics between the different ACEIs. The effect of different ACEIs on time to HF-hospitalization was assessed using the multiple propensity score-weighted multivariable Cox proportional hazard model.

Results: The study included 139,994 patients with 69.50% (97,293) on lisinopril, 21.79% (30,503) on fosinopril, 8.41% (11,775) on captopril and 0.30% (423) on enalapril. Propensity scores balanced nearly all differences between different ACEIs groups. Enalapril (hazard ratio [HR]: 0.800; 95% CI: 0.492-1.297), fosinopril (HR: 0.971; 95% CI: 0.877-1.074), and lisinopril (HR: 1.005; 95% CI: 0.918-1.101) when compared with captopril were found to have similar effectiveness in reducing HF-hospitalizations.

Conclusion: In patients with HF, we found that the four ACEIs are equally effective in reducing HF-hospitalization in day-to-day practice.