Key result
Heart failure affects nearly 10% of individuals over age 80, who face a 5-year survival rate of less than 20%, though evidence-based therapies reduce morbidity and mortality across age groups.
This review discusses the epidemiology of heart failure in older patients and the established benefits of standard therapies such as ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers, and spironolactone.
High HF burden and poor survival in octogenarians warrant optimized therapy; leaves open age-specific implementation questions despite established benefits.
Heart failure is predominantlya disease ofolderpeople,affecting almost 1 in 10 of those over the age of 80 [1]and accounting for 5% of hospital admissions in this agegroup [2]. Although an overall 5-year survival figure of50% has been quoted [3], prognosis is considerablyworse in older patients, with a corresponding figure ofless than 20% in those aged 80 or over [4].Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors [5] andb-blockers [6, 7] reduce morbidity, mortality andhospitalization rates in patients with systolic heartwith benefits in older (>60) as well as younger sub-groups [5, 8], although very elderly patients havegenerally been under-represented in these trials. Morerecently, spironolactone has been shown to reducemorbidity and mortality in patients with advancedsystolic heart failure when added to standard treat-ment, an effect seen in the older as well as the youngersubgroups within the trial [9].
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Jennifer A. Kelly (2000) conducted a review in Heart failure. Heart failure affects nearly 10% of individuals over age 80, who face a 5-year survival rate of less than 20%, though evidence-based therapies reduce morbidity and mortality across age groups.
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