Different profiles of advanced heart failure among patients with and without diabetes mellitus. Findings from the EPICTER study

•The different scores used to define mortality risk include some variables that are difficult to assess in patients with advanced HF.•Clinical profile of advanced HF in patients with DM displayed more comorbidity.•Patients with DM and advanced HF also had progression of complications of DM.•General criteria of advanced HF prevailed over cardiac ones regarding prognosis.•A better characterization will help to avoid overtreatment and improve quality of care of these patients. This work aims to compare the characteristics of advanced heart failure (HF) in patients with and without type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) and to determine the relevance of variables used to define advanced HF. This cross-sectional, multicenter study included patients hospitalized for HF. They were classified into four groups according to presence/absence of advanced HF, determined based on general and cardiac criteria, and presence/absence of DM. To analyze the importance of variables, we grew a random forest algorithm (RF) based on mortality at six months. A total of 3153 patients were included. The prevalence of advanced HF among patients with DM was 24% compared to 23% among those without DM (p=0.53). Patients with advanced HF and DM had more comorbidity related to cardiovascular and renal diseases; their prognosis was the poorest (log-rank