Front Med (Lausanne). 2026 Sep 29;13:1957639. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2026.1957639. eCollection 2026.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Diagnostic criteria for sarcopenia show heterogeneity in patients with heart failure (HF). This study reviews existing evidence through a scoping review.
METHODS: We searched six databases (PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure [CNKI], and Wanfang) from inception to May 2026. Two reviewers screened literature and extracted data independently. We used narrative synthesis.
RESULTS: We included 23 studies covering 8 diagnostic criteria. The Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia (AWGS) 2019 (9 studies) and the European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People 2 (EWGSOP2) (7 studies) were most common. The overall prevalence ranged from 8.9% to 65.8%, with wide variation within the same criterion. Only 3 studies performed head-to-head comparisons. Heart failure-specific factors (edema interference, New York Heart Association [NYHA] class limitation, timing of assessment in acute phase) received limited attention. No study assessed sarcopenia at acute decompensation before diuresis. One study evaluated patients with stage B HF, generally considered pre-HF, and was interpreted separately. Eleven studies reported prognostic associations, yet only 1 reported discrimination and reclassification metrics such as concordance index (C-index), net reclassification improvement (NRI), and integrated discrimination improvement (IDI). External validation of diagnostic and prognostic performance was insufficient.
CONCLUSION: Current evidence does not support a unified heart failure-specific diagnostic framework for sarcopenia. Future work should include multicenter prospective cohort studies to establish HF-specific cut-off values, develop assessment protocols for acute decompensated HF and NYHA class IV patients, and conduct large-sample external validation of diagnostic and prognostic performance.
PMID:42871368 | PMC:PMC13659442 | DOI:10.3389/fmed.2026.1957639