Key result
Quality of life assessment should be an integral part of holistic patient evaluation, alongside clinical parameters, particularly in chronic diseases like heart failure.
Why the study?
Tools are needed to capture important aspects of patient life that cannot be measured by laboratory exams or radiological procedures, especially in chronic conditions like heart failure.
Quality of Life evaluation is a crucial component of patient care, particularly in older patients with heart failure, to guide therapeutic decisions alongside clinical parameters.
Highlights QoL assessment in older HF care; leaves open prospective validation of decision thresholds.
In medical terminology, it has become more and more common the use of the expression "Quality of Life" (QoL) to define a series of aspects that go beyond the traditional, clinical and "objective" evaluation of the medical intervention. The attention to QoL comes from the need to find tools that are able to reveal important aspects of the life of the patient that cannot be measured by a laboratory exam and/or a radiological procedure. The QoL is measured through multidimensional questionnaires on, at the very least, the domains of physical, psychological and social health. The improvement of the health care standards and the technological progress in medical matters have brought about an increase in the average age of the population, and as a consequence, an increase of the chronic and degenerative disease, which can negatively influence the patient's quality of life. Amongst these pathologies, heart failure (HF) has a high prevalence in patients who are at least 70 years old, and it's the cause of frequent and repeated hospitalizations. The estimate of the QoL becomes then a very important piece of the puzzle to figure out, as important as the clinical parameters, to allow the patient to become an integral part of the physician's decisions and to reach more quickly and with better results the therapeutic objectives.
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Porcu et al. (2019) conducted a review in Heart failure. Quality of Life assessment was evaluated. Quality of life assessment should be an integral part of holistic patient evaluation, alongside clinical parameters, particularly in chronic diseases like heart failure.
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