ACHTUNG-Rule: a new and improved model for prognostic assessment in myocardial infarction.

BACKGROUND: THROMBOLYSIS IN MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION (TIMI), PLATELET GLYCOPROTEIN IIB/IIIA IN UNSTABLE ANGINA: Receptor Suppression Using Integrilin (PURSUIT) and Global Registry of Acute Coronary Events (GRACE) scores have been developed for risk stratification in myocardial infarction (MI). The latter is the most validated score, yet active research is ongoing for improving prognostication in MI.

AIM: Derivation and validation of a new model for intrahospital, post-discharge and combined/total all-cause mortality prediction - ACHTUNG-Rule - and comparison with the GRACE algorithm.

METHODS: 1091 patients admitted for MI (age 68.4 ± 13.5, 63.2% males, 41.8% acute MI with ST-segment elevation (STEMI)) and followed for 19.7 ± 6.4 months were assigned to a derivation sample. 400 patients admitted at a later date at our institution (age 68.3 ± 13.4, 62.7% males, 38.8% STEMI) and followed for a period of 7.2 ± 4.0 months were assigned to a validation sample. Three versions of the ACHTUNG-Rule were developed for the prediction of intrahospital, post-discharge and combined (intrahospital plus post-discharge) all-cause mortality prediction. All models were evaluated for their predictive performance using the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, calibration through the Hosmer-Lemeshow test and predictive utility within each individual patient through the Brier score. Comparison through ROC curve analysis and measures of risk reclassification - net reclassification improvement index (NRI) or Integrated Discrimination Improvement (IDI) - was performed between the ACHTUNG versions for intrahospital, post-discharge and combined mortality prediction and the equivalent GRACE score versions for intrahospital (GRACE-IH), post-discharge (GRACE-6PD) and post-admission 6-month mortality (GRACE-6).

RESULTS: Assessment of calibration and overall performance of the ACHTUNG-Rule demonstrated a good fit (p value for the Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test of 0.258, 0.101 and 0.550 for ACHTUNG-IH, ACHTUNG-T and ACHTUNG-R, respectively) and high discriminatory power in the validation cohort for all the primary endpoints (intrahospital mortality: AUC ACHTUNG-IH 0.886 ± 0.035 vs. AUC GRACE-IH 0.906 ± 0.026; post-discharge mortality: AUC ACHTUNG-R 0.827 ± 0.036 vs. AUC GRACE-6PD 0.811 ± 0.034; combined/total mortality: AUC ACHTUNG-T 0.831 ± 0.028 vs. AUC GRACE-6 0.815 ± 0.033). Furthermore, all versions of the ACHTUNG-Rule accurately reclassified a significant number of patients in different, more appropriate, risk categories (NRI ACHTUNG-IH 17.1%, p (2-sided) = 0.0021; NRI ACHTUNG-R 22.0%, p = 0.0002; NRI ACHTUNG-T 18.6%, p = 0.0012). The prognostic performance of the ACHTUNG-Rule was similar in both derivation and validation samples.

CONCLUSIONS: All versions of the ACHTUNG-Rule have shown excellent discriminative power and good calibration for predicting intrahospital, post-discharge and combined in-hospital plus post-discharge mortality. The ACHTUNG version for intrahospital mortality prediction was not inferior to its equivalent GRACE model, and ACHTUNG versions for post-discharge and combined/total mortality demonstrated apparent superiority. External validation in wider, independent, preferably multicentre, registries is warranted before its potential clinical implementation.