[Clinical characteristics and pharmacological treatment of patients with heart failure in a primary health care cohort].

OBJECTIVE

To characterise patients with heart failure (HF) in Primary Health Care (PHC) and describe their socio-demographic and clinical characteristics and pharmacological treatment.

DESIGN

Descriptive cohort study. SITE: Information System for the Development of Research in Primary Care (SIDIAP), which captures information from the electronic health records of PHC of the Catalan Institute of Health (approximately 80% of the Catalan population).

PARTICIPANTS

Adults with an active diagnosis of HF between 2018 and 2022.

MAIN MEASUREMENTS

Sociodemographic and anthropometric variables, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), New York Heart Association (NYHA), laboratory data, comorbidities, exposure to drugs for HF and other pathologies.

RESULTS

75,769 individuals were included; 22.7% with HF with reduced LVEF (HFrEF), 26.2% with preserved LVEF (HfpEF) and 51.2% with non-specific HF. The HfrEF group consisted mostly of men (59.5%), with a mean age of 74.8 years, and the others of women (58.8% and 54.6%, aged 78.7 and 80.6 years, respectively). LVEF was recorded in 20.3% and NYHA in 43.9% of patients. In terms of treatment, 75.3% of people with HfrEF were receiving renin-angiotensin system (RAS) drugs, 75.9% beta-blockers, 42.1% mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists, 33.6% sodium-glucose cotransporter type 2 inhibitors and 62.8% diuretics. 63% with HfpEF were receiving RAS and 68% diuretics. 61.8% with unspecified HF were receiving RAS and 67.5% diuretics.

CONCLUSIONS

We analysed the population with HF in PHC in Catalonia. We highlight a low registry of cardiac function, LVEF and NYHA. The frequency of drug use for HF was different between populations and differed from the recommendations.