Profile for Estimating Risk of Heart Failure

Abstract

HEART FAILURE morbidity and mortality continue unabated despite declines in some cardiovascular events.¹ Heart failure is a progressive, often terminal stage of cardiac disease that, when symptomatic, curtails survival like many types of cancer.² In Framingham Study subjects with overt congestive heart failure, the median survival rate was only 1.7 years for men and 3.2 years for women.³ This heart failure mortality rate is 4 to 8 times the death rate of the general population of comparable age and has not improved greatly despite major declines in coronary, hypertensive, and rheumatic heart disease mortality.¹ Furthermore, sudden death continues to be a prominent feature of heart failure.¹