title: Heart failure and health related quality of life.
abstract: Quality of life is a major goal in the context of preventive and therapeutic cardiology. It is important, both as an outcome measure in clinical trials of congestive heart failure (CHF) and as a consideration in individual physicians' therapeutic decisions. In this article, quality of life concepts are reviewed, methods of measurement are explored and clinically significant changes on prognosis are discussed. There is a need for more research which is based on carefully selected measures of quality of life chosen as being of particular importance to patients and to the hypotheses being tested.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Hospital de S. João, Porto Medical School, Porto, Portugal. rmnscoelho@mail.telepac.pt
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Coelho
authors.forename: Sónia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ramos
authors.forename: Joana
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Prata
authors.forename: Paulo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bettencourt
authors.forename: António
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ferreira
authors.forename: Mário
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cerqueira-Gomes