[Clinical and therapeutic characteristics in patients with heart failure cared in a tertiary hospital].
BACKGROUND
Heart failure shows high incidence and prevalence in our population. Objectives of our study are to describe the profile of patients cared in the Internal Medicine Department of our hospital, in order to analyze the therapeutic characteristics and to know the degree of utilization of different pharmacological groups.


METHODS
A cross-sectional study with collection of data from clinical records of patients admitted to 2002 with the diagnosis of heart failure in Internal Medicine Department of San Carlos Hospital in Madrid. Total patients with heart failure was 1,338. Calculating the sample size with a precision of 5% and a confidence interval of 95%, the number of randomly selected clinical records was 130. Data were obtained with a questionnaire for analysis of different clinical and therapeutic parameters.


RESULTS
The average age was 80.3 (SD: 9.64) years, and most patients were women. Most frequent associated pathology was hypertension, and in 70.2% patients a diagnosis of some disease was established. Diuretics were the drugs most utilized and its prescription increased at discharge (p < 0.0001). Furthermore, the higher the functional class the more diuretics were prescribed. Beta-blockers were prescribed in 7.1% patients, more frequently in patients with an ejection fraction higher than 35% (p = 0.042).


CONCLUSIONS
Patients with heart failure in our environment have advanced age, shows important comorbidities, and suffer an advanced functional class heart failure, being the diuretics their essential treatment. We observed that there is no uniformity concerning the treatment with regard to the last recommendations, and that there is a limited utilization of drugs as beta-blockers that have demonstrated increase the survival of patients with heart failure.
Torres-Gárate
R
R
Servicio de Medicina Interna I, Hospital Clínico San Carlos, Madrid, Spain. rtgarate@terra.es
Alvarez-Rodríguez
E
E
Segoviano Mateo
R
R
Gutiérrez Larraínzar
A
A
Lozano Tonkin
C
C
Calvo Manuel
E
E
D000318:Adrenergic beta-Agonists / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006296:Health Services / Q000592:standards*; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence; D013030:Spain
D000318:Adrenergic beta-Agonists