Up to 33% of internal medicine hospitals are discharged from patients with decompensated heart failure

MADRID, October 19 (European press) –

Dr. Maria Dolores Martín Escalante, treasurer and board member of the Spanish Society of Internal Medicine (SEMI), noted that up to 33 percent of internal medicine hospital discharges come from patients with decompensated heart failure.

This was announced during the 23rd Meeting on Heart Failure and Atrial Fibrillation at SEMI, where more than 250 internists analyzed novelties in diagnostic and therapeutic management of these diseases through discussions and update sessions, and where various findings were also presented. Research studies promoted by the ICyFA group at SEMI and a new clinical registry for patients with heart failure called RICA 2 (which updates the RICA 1 registry).

Regarding the prevalence of heart failure in hospitalized patients in internal medicine, Dr. Martine Escalante noted that, according to her hospital, “As many as 1 in 3 internal medicine discharges (33%) are patients with decompensated heart failure. And if we talk about atrial fibrillation, that number goes up to 45 percent.”

Regarding ‘PREVAMIC’ (a study with 415 patients – 49% men and 51% women – and with the participation of 26 hospitals that recruited the data), Dr. Oscar Aramburu Bodas, of the Internal Medicine Service at Virgin Macarena University Hospital in Seville stated that “what Between 15 and 23 percent of internal medicine heart failure patients aged 65 years or older, left ventricular hypertrophy and any LVEF value have TTR amyloidosis.”

Regarding the ‘Preference’ study, Dr. José Luis Morales Roll emphasized that “patients with sustained heart failure with preserved ejection fraction and anemia have a higher rate of events (mortality/re-admission)” and that “treatment with oral or intravenous iron in cardiac Failure is associated with a preserved ejection fraction with a lower event rate (sucrosomal FU/IV carboxymaltose). In the study, 44.8% of patients had some event (34% returned and 10% died).