Observational Study of Chinese Medicine Syndrome Distribution in Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction and Its Impact on Prognosis

Objective To investigate the distribution of Chinese medicine (CM) syndrome in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) on admission and its impact on prognosis. Methods A total of 525 AMI patients were prospectively recruited and classifified into 4 groups based on their clinical characteristics: excess-heat, excess-cold, deficiency-heat and deficiency-cold syndromes. Major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) were followed up. Results The excess syndrome was more common than deficiency syndrome (72.95% vs. 27.05%; P <0.05). Totally 495 (94.29%) of 525 AMI patients were followed up (median 277 days). There were 59 (11.92%) MACEs. After adjusted with confounding factors in Cox regression models, the hazard ratio (95% confifidence interval) of excess-heat, excess-cold, defificiency-heat and defificiency-cold syndrome groups were 1, 1.25 (0.63, 2.49; P <0.05), 2.37 (1.14, 4.94; P <0.05), 3.76 (1.71, 8.28; P <0.05), respectively. Conclusions Excess syndrome was more common in AMI patients and had better prognosis, while defificiency-cold syndrome had the poorest prognosis. CM syndrome was of value in predicting long-term outcomes in AMI patients.