European Heart Journal Advance Access originally published online on October 11, 2005
European Heart Journal 2005 26(24):2611-2613; doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehi597
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© The European Society of Cardiology 2005. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Managing patients with heart failure: the reality of clinical practice
Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester LE 1 7LX, UK
* E-mail address: is11@le.ac.uk
This editorial refers to Under-utilization of evidence-based drug treatment in patients with heart failure is only partially explained by dissimilarity to patients enrolled in landmark trials: a report from the Euro Heart Survey on Heart Failure
by M.J. Lenzen et al., on page 2706
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The medical community should, by now, be well aware of the importance of chronic heart failure (CHF), an increasingly common condition with high morbidity and mortality. We know that for patients with CHF in clinical trials, meaningful mortality and morbidity benefits are obtained with angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors (or alternatively angiotensin receptor blockers), ß-blockers, and aldosterone antagonists. The accumulated body of evidence for the efficacy of these treatments in CHF is powerful. Guideline documents from national and international societies1 endorse the evidence, guide and encourage physicians to prescribe evidence-based therapies, and, to a large extent, define the expected standards of care.
These guidelines have for some years recommended that the routine management of patients with CHF with left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD) should include both ACE-inhibitor and ß-blocker, unless contraindicated. However, observational studies consistently indicate that large proportions of patients with CHF do not receive these therapies.2 It is often
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- Under-utilization of evidence-based drug treatment in patients with heart failure is only partially explained by dissimilarity to patients enrolled in landmark trials: a report from the Euro Heart Survey on Heart Failure
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EHJ 2005 26: 2706-2713.[Abstract] [FREE Full Text]