Heart failure survival rates not improved since 1998: study

Survival rates for people suffering from heart failure have not improved since 1998, according to a first-of-its-kind study.
Researchers from University of Oxford and University of Birmingham in the UK looked at medical records from 54,313 patients with heart failure.
They found that 81.3 per cent survived for one year, 51.5 per cent survived for two years, and 29.5 per cent survived for 10 years, following diagnosis with the condition.
However, between 1998 and 2012, survival rates for people aged over 45 with heart failure showed no improvement, in contrast to cancer survival rates in the UK which have doubled in the last 40 years.

Heart failure is a common long-term condition affecting around 900,000 in the UK. An estimated one to two in every 100 adults in the West currently live with the condition.
"Getting an accurate estimate of heart failure prognosis is vital for those who commission healthcare services, so resources can be allocated appropriately," said lead author Clare Taylor, researcher at the University of Oxford.

"Perhaps more importantly, this allows patients to make more informed choices about treatments and possible end-of-life care," said Taylor.
"While the survival rates were better than other studies, we disappointingly didn't see any improvement over time," she said.

"We plan to do more work to examine why this might be the case and find ways to improve the outlook for patients with heart failure in the future," Taylor said.
This is the first study to provide survival rate estimates for heart failure in the UK based on medical records.
While the study did not look at the effect of medication following heart failure on survival rates, it found that survival rate estimates vary depending on a person's age, gender, other health conditions and blood pressure - all factors that healthcare professionals should take into consideration when discussing heart failure with their patients.

The study was published in the journal Family Practice.