Heart failure management: guidelines versus clinical practice
Madeira, H.
Revista Portuguesa de Cardiologia Orgao Oficial da Sociedade Portuguesa de Cardiologia 23 Suppl. 3: Iii39-Iii44
2004
ISSN/ISBN: 0870-2551 PMID: 15526613 Document Number: 568096
In Europe the management of heart failure is largely conducted by primary care physicians and several reports have revealed differences between guidelines and actual practice. The IMPROVEMENT of Heart Failure project was designed to assess how patients with heart failure are managed by those physicians. Two surveys, the "perception survey" and the "actual practice survey" addressed to 1363 physicians, included questions on diagnosis, functional assessment and treatment. The major discrepancies found were: the lack of awareness about the concept of heart failure with preserved systolic function; the low number of echocardiograms requested; the low rate of prescription of beta-blocking agents and spironolactone; and the inappropriately low of angiotensine-converting enzyme inhibitors prescribed.