First Hospitalization Tells Us Everything About Heart Failure

of patients hospitalized for acute HF. 3 They divided 1,580 patients into 3 groups based on the number of previous HF admissions: no previous admission, single previous admission, and multiple previous admissions.HF patients with multiple previous admissions had lower blood pressure, lower hemoglobin level, and poorer kidney and cardiac function than the other groups.Multiple previous admissions was an independent risk factor for all-cause death and HF readmission compared with the other 2 groups.This result was similar in all subgroup analyses and could be widely applied to every HF population.On the other hand, a single previous admission was an independent risk factor for HF readmission, but not all-cause death, compared with no previous admission.The most important point of H eart failure (HF) is a progressive disease (Figure ). 1 Physical function represented by New York Heart Association functional class gradually decreases with repeated exacerbation of HF, and patients with HF become refractory to treatment, eventually leading to death.Various treatments, including disease management, drug therapy, and non-drug therapy, are available for each stage of HF, and thus it is crucial to select an optimal treatment at the appropriate time.Clarifying the surrogate markers of high-risk patients is also an important goal.Although it is known that a history of HF hospitalization is a high risk factor, 2 there have been no studies focusing on the clinical significance of the number of hospitalizations in patients with a history of HF hospitalization.