There is little evidence that acute exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) impacts the rate of hospitalization for congestive heart failure (CHF) in developing countries. The primary purpose of the present retrospective study was to evaluate the short-term association between ambient PM2.5 and hospitalization for CHF in Beijing, China. A total of 15,256 hospital admissions for CHF from January 2010 to June 2012 were identified from Beijing Medical Claim Data for Employees and a time-series design with generalized additive Poisson model was used to assess the obtained data. We found a clear significant exposure response association between PM2.5 and the number of hospitalizations for CHF. Increasing PM2.5 daily concentrations by 10 μg/m³ caused a 0.35% (95% CI, 0.06⁻0.64%) increase in the number of CHF admissions on the same day. We also found that female and older patients were more susceptible to PM2.5. These associations remained significant in sensitivity analyses involving changing the degrees of freedom of calendar time, temperature, and relative humidity. PM2.5 was associated with significantly increased risk of hospitalization for CHF in this citywide study. These findings may contribute to the limited scientific evidence about the acute impacts of PM2.5 on CHF in China.
Keywords: PM2.5; air pollution; heart failure; short-term association.