Heart failure in Parkinson's disease: analysis of the United States medicare current beneficiary survey.
OBJECTIVE
We sought to examine the prevalence of heart failure in elderly PD versus non-PD patients using a national sample of Medicare beneficiaries in the United States.


METHODS
The prevalence of heart failure in elderly PD patients was 2.27 times that of non-PD patients (19.4% versus 8.7%, 95% CI = 1.43-3.60, p 0.0005), and remained twice as high after excluding patients with stroke and possible vascular parkinsonism.


CONCLUSIONS
In this cross-sectional study of a national Medicare database, heart failure occurred twice as frequently in elderly PD patients as in non-PD patients. Prospective studies are warranted to verify these findings.
Department of Neurology, University of South Florida, 12901 Bruce B. Downs Blvd MDC 55, Tampa, FL 33612, USA.
T A
TA
Zesiewicz
J A
JA
Strom
A R
AR
Borenstein
R A
RA
Hauser
C R
CR
Cimino
H L
HL
Fontanet
G B
GB
Cintron
J F
JF
Staffetti
P B
PB
Dunne
K L
KL
Sullivan
D000368:Aged; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000150:complications / Q000453:epidemiology; D015897:Comorbidity; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003625:Data Collection; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005260:Female; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D006278:Medicare / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000150:complications* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology