[Clinical characteristics of patients diagnosed of chronic heart failure attended in Primary Care. The CARDIOPRES study].
BACKGROUND
Scarce information is available on the clinical characteristics and risk factors of patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) attended in Primary Care (PC) setting. The aim of this study was to analyze the clinical characteristics of this population in PC.


METHODS
Multicenter, cross-sectional study in patients with CHF, consecutively recruited by 232 physicians in PC. The collected data included sociodemographic, etiologic, clinical and therapeutic variables.


RESULTS
Eight hundred forty seven (847) patients were included (age 73.0 +/- 9.6 years; 50.5% men). Of these, 84.3% had arterial hypertension (AHT), 59.2% hypercholesterolemia and 34.9% diabetes mellitus. The most frequent associated clinical disorders were ischemic heart disease (40.1%) and peripheral artery disease (28.6%). In 69.6% of the patients the physicians knew the type of dysfunction (32.4% systolic, 37.2% diastolic). The main etiologies of CHF were the hypertensive cardiomyopathy (75.0%) and ischemic heart disease (40.1%); the most frequent trigger factor was atrial fibrillation (43.9%). Loop diuretics (72.3%) and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (60.9%) were the treatments used most and 6.7% of the patients were receiving treatment with beta blockers.


CONCLUSIONS
AHT appears to be primary cause of CHF in PC. Diastolic dysfunction is more frequent than the systolic one, and the PC physicians do not know the cause of the ventricular dysfunction in one third of the cases. Loop diuretics and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors were the most frequently used in these patients; the use of beta blockers in CHF is very scarce in PC.
Rodríguez Roca
G C
GC
Centro de Salud de La Puebla de Montalbán, Toledo, Spain. grodriguezr@semergen.es
Barrios Alonso
V
V
Aznar Costa
J
J
Llisterri Caro
J L
JL
Alonso Moreno
F J
FJ
Escobar Cervantes
C
C
Lou Arnal
S
S
Divisón Garrote
J A
JA
Murga Eizagaechevarría
N
N
Matalí Gilarranz
A
A
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011320:Primary Health Care; D012307:Risk Factors; D013030:Spain