The Heart Failure Management Programmes Network: overview by Kenneth Dickstein
August 2006
Despite recent evidence of improved prognosis after a first hospitalisation for heart failure, pharmacological treatment does not adequately improve the high morbidity and poor survival rates associated with chronic heart failure. Health care practitioners who treat HF patients often face the challenge of managing multiple conditions requiring a complex regime of multiple medications. An organised, multidisciplinary approach is needed to optimally diagnose, carefully review and prescribe treatment, educate and counsel patients and families with regard to medication use and life style changes as well as to provide adequate post discharge follow-up.
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Heart Failure Management Programmes in Europe by Tiny Jaarsma et al
June 2006
The ESC Guidelines on Chronic Heart Failure (HF) recommend the establishment of an organised system of specialist heart failure care to improve outcomes of HF patients.
Only a few European countries have a large number of organised programmes for HF care and follow up. A survey conducted by UNITE research group of the WGCN of the ESC describes that half of these programmes were located in an outpatient clinic.
Read the abstract here...