A new review of the global burden of heart failure (HF) hospitalizations uses worldwide registry data to review the characteristics, management and outcomes of patients hospitalized with HF, regional differences in presentation and treatment, and future directions for research. The report, published Feb. 5 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, ultimately calls for a global registry for hospitalized HF.

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HF hospitalizations account for 1-2 percent of all hospitalizations, as well as substantial worldwide morbidity and mortality, according to the review’s authors. Further, registry data provide important information regarding regional differences in age, gender, race and ethnicity at presentation, as well as the use of pharmacologic and surgical interventions, and patient outcomes. Importantly, registries also have been instrumental in developing and implementing large-scale quality improvement initiatives.

Nevertheless, "The single greatest limitation of the hospitalized HF registries conducted to date is the relative paucity of data collected outside of North America and Western Europe. Thus, the current knowledge base on hospitalized HF is largely derived from a non-representative sample including only slightly more than 15 percent of the world’s population," wrote the authors.

Because HF is a major health problem worldwide, there is a pressing need for more universally representative data and patient populations, added the authors. Future research must develop systems for more consistent and comprehensive methods for data collection, consecutive enrollment of patients and tracking post-discharge complications and outcomes.

"There is currently an unmet critical need in hospitalized HF to design and conduct rational global hospital-based registries in order to better understand this heterogeneous patient population, inform public policy decisions and guide basic, translational and clinical research. It is highly desirable to develop a hospital-based registry that is global and geographically representative, employs consecutive or intermittently consecutive enrollment and captures comprehensive and longitudinal data, including hospital course and post-discharge outcomes," the authors concluded.

Keywords: Quality Improvement, Registries, Public Policy, Knowledge Bases, Cardiology, Heart Failure, Patient Discharge, Hospitalization, Cost of Illness

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