Heart Failure Deadly At Earlier Age in Poorer Countries

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Hisham Dokainish, M.D., FRCPC, FASE, FACC Associate Professor of Medicine, McMaster University Principal Investigator, Population Health Research Insitute Director of Heart Failure Services, Director of Medical Diagnostic Units & Echocardiography, Hamilton Health Sciences Hamilton, ON, Canada

Dr. Dokainish

Hisham Dokainish, M.D., FRCPC, FASE, FACC
Associate Professor of Medicine, McMaster University
Principal Investigator, Population Health Research Insitute
Director of Heart Failure Services,
Director of Medical Diagnostic Units & Echocardiography, Hamilton Health Sciences
Hamilton, ON, Canada

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Most data on mortality and prognostic factors in patients with heart failure come from North America and Europe, with little information from other regions of the world, particularly from low and middle income countries.

MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings?

Response: We enrolled 5823 patients within 1 year (with 98% follow-up). Overall mortality was 16ยท5%: highest in Africa (34%) and India (23%), intermediate in southeast Asia (15%), and lowest in China (7%), South America (9%), and the Middle East (9%). These large regional differences in mortality persisted after multivariable adjustment for demographic, clinical, medication and socioeconomic variables. About half of the mortality risk was explained by multivariable modeling with these variables; however, the remainder was unexplained.

MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report?

Response: Heart failure patients in Africa, India and Southeast Asia (the poorer countries in this study) were on average 10 years younger but had much higher risk of death, compared to heart failure patients in South America, China and the Middle East (the relatively richer countries in this study).

MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Response: To understand regional variations in morality in heart failure patients, future studies will need to assess differences in health-care infrastructure, quality and access, or environmental and genetic factors.

Disclosures: This study was funded by an unrestricted grant from Novartis.

MedicalResearch.com: Thank you for your contribution to the MedicalResearch.com community.

Citation:
Heart Failure 2017 abstract discussing:

Heart failure mortality is inversely related to wealth of country

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Last Updated on May 3, 2017 by Marie Benz MD FAAD