Do echocardiographic measures of cardiac structure and function correlate with fatigue, and do fatigue symptoms provide complementary prognostic information in patients with prevalent heart failure?
Fatigue symptoms provide independent prognostic value beyond echocardiographic assessments in patients with heart failure, despite not correlating with cardiac structure or function.
Fatigue, as well as echocardiographic indices of cardiac structure and function, are both associated with adverse outcomes in heart failure (HF). However, the relationship of fatigue and echocardiographic assessments have not yet been fully characterized. In this analysis of 851 individuals with prevalent HF in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, echocardiographic measures of cardiac structure and function were not associated with general and exertional fatigue. Furthermore, fatigue symptoms provided complementary prognostic information to that provided by echocardiographic assessments.
Pavlovic et al. (Mon,) studied this question.