© 2003 by BMJ Publishing Group & British Cardiac Society
EDITORIAL
Estimating prognosis in heart failure: time for a better approach
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor Martin R Cowie, Cardiac Medicine, National Heart & Lung Institute, London SW3 6LY, UK;
m.cowie@imperial.ac.uk
More research is needed into estimating risk in heart failure and in communicating prognostic information to patients
Keywords: heart failure; risk prediction
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Estimating prognosis is endorsed by recent clinical guidelines as a key element of the management of heart failure.1,2 How this is to be done is less clear. Heart failure follows a variable clinical course, and as many as one half of patients will die suddenly rather than dying of progressive heart failure.3 The predictability of death may therefore be lower than in other conditions. The challenge of identifying clinical variables consistently associated with mortality has been summarised by Cowburn and colleagues.4 Many of the published studies are small, and include highly selected patient populations, with different variables recorded in each dataset. Differences in the way measurements are made—for example, in the assessment of left ventricular systolic function—and the close correlation between many variables add further complexity. Also, it should not be assumed that the same variables will be associated with mortality in the early phases of heart failure as well
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
-
Selman, L., Harding, R., Beynon, T., Hodson, F., Coady, E., Hazeldine, C., Walton, M., Gibbs, L., Higginson, I. J
(2007). Improving end-of-life care for patients with chronic heart failure: "Let's hope it'll get better, when I know in my heart of hearts it won't". Heart
93: 963-967
[Abstract] [Full Text] -
Murray, S. A, Boyd, K., Sheikh, A.
(2005). Palliative care in chronic illness. BMJ
330: 611-612
[Full Text]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
