Therapeutic Education of Heart Failure: Prospective Study in the Cardiology Department of the Dalal Jamm National Hospital Center in Dakar

Context: Heart failure (HF) is a common pathology requiring many types of treatments, including therapeutic education, which has demonstrated a major benefit in terms of reducing re-hospitalization and mortality from HF or all other causes. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the contribution of therapeutic education (TPE) in patients with heart failure. Methodology: This was a single-centre, interventional, non-randomized, before-and-after type study. It focused on hospitalized heart failure patients aged 18 and over. We evaluated the effect of TPE on therapeutic compliance, knowledge, practical attitudes, patient perceptions and quality of life. Results: Our study included 41 patients prior to therapeutic education: 17 men (41%) and 24 women (59%). The mean age was 54.7 ± 16.2 years. After the TPE sessions we evaluated 32 patients: The patients with good compliance increased from 75% to 90.63%, and patients with a low level of compliance (90.6%) decreased to 34.4%. An increase in the number of patients who had an attitude adapted to not exceeding the recommended amount of salt (6 before TPE and 22 after TPE), as well as in the number of patients who had an attitude adapted to physical activity (12 before TPE and 16 after TPE). There was also an increase in the number of patients who were confident about the outcome of their disease (12 before TPE and 16 after TPE), and a decrease in those who were hopeless (8 before TPE and 5 after TPE), an improvement in the quality of life score (45.03 before TPE and 15.78 after TPE). Conclusion: This study shows the beneficial effect of therapeutic education in patients hospitalized for heart failure in improving their level of knowledge, compliance with treatment, lifestyle habits and quality of life.