Introduction: The current guidelines of the European Society of Cardiology for the management of patients with heart failure denote two sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) – dapagliflozin and empagliflozin - as the only pharmacological options with a disease-modifying effect in chronic heart failure (CHF) across the entire range of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) values. (1) The aim of our study was to assess relative efficacy of dapagliflozin and empagliflozin in routinely treated CHF patients.
Patients and Methods: In this single-center registry analysis, prevalent and incident CHF patients with a wide range of left ventricular ejection fraction values started on dapagliflozin or empagliflozin in addition to other guideline-directed therapy were mutually balanced on a range of characteristics, and were assessed for incidence of a composite of all-cause death/major adverse cardiac events (primary outcome) over the initial 6 months of treatment, and for New Your Heart Association (NYHA) functional class at 6 months (secondary outcome). Frequentist and Bayes (with a moderately informed skeptical prior) estimates were generated for dapagliflozin vs. empagliflozin comparison.
Results: In both prevalent (dapagliflozin n=393, empagliflozin n=328) and incident (dapagliflozin n=124, empagliflozin n=116) patients, those prescribed dapagliflozin had somewhat higher incidence of the primary outcome and were more likely to present with a worse NYHA class at 6 months, but the estimates were imprecise. In the pooled data, primary events (102 in total) were more common in dapagliflozin-prescribed patients (frequentist estimate RR=1.519, 95%CI 1.239-1.861; Bayes RR=1.380, 95%CrI 0.981-1.944). Dapagliflozin-prescribed patients were also were more likely to have a worse NYHA class at 6 months (OR=1.540, 95%CI 1.208-1.962; Bayes OR=1.425, 95%CrI 1.098-1.781).
Conclusion: CHF patients prescribed with dapagliflozin apparently had poorer outcomes than those prescribed with empagliflozin over the initial 6 months of treatment. Data emphasize a need for a direct randomized comparison of the two treatments in this setting.