Esegui ricerca
18 January 2011

Heart Failure Patients Twice as Likely to Die If Admitted to General Wards, UK Study Finds

Aumenta dimensioni testoDiminuisci dimensioni testo

Heart failure patients admitted to general wards are twice as likely to die as those admitted to cardiology wards, shows a UK audit of the treatment of the condition, published online in the journal Heart.

Women fared worse than men when it comes to appropriate investigations and treatment, the findings suggest, although death rates were similar.

In 2006/7, heart failure accounted for more than a quarter of a million hospital deaths and discharges in England and Wales, equating to around 2.5 million bed days a year and at an annual cost to the NHS of £563 million.

The authors draw their conclusions from a survey of the first 10 patients admitted each month with a primary diagnosis of heart failure to 86 hospitals across England and Wales between April 2008 and March 2009.

During this period, just over 6,000 patients, with an average age of 78, were admitted with the condition. Almost half of these (43%) were women.

At admission, less than a third (30%) were reported to be breathless at rest and under half (43%) as having swollen feet/ankles. These are both diagnostic features of heart failure.

Appropriate investigations were not always carried out, the survey shows, with those admitted to general medical wards less likely to receive these than those admitted to cardiology wards.
 

(ScienceDaily)

Read more

youris.com provides its content to all media free of charge. We would appreciate if you could acknowledge youris.com as the source of the content.