This article provides practical recommendations and summarizes key aspects of heart failure diagnosis and management for primary care practitioners.
Should prompt primary care adoption of natriuretic peptide testing and GDMT; reinforces and extends ESC HF recommendations.
Heart failure (HF) is a common and costly clinical syndrome, associated with significant morbidity and reduced life expectancy, affecting around 1–2% of adults in developed countries.1 Timely diagnosis is important to optimise evidence-based treatment opportunities, which delay mortality and improve symptoms, but the early stages of HF can be difficult to identify clinically. Primary care has a vital role in providing holistic, person-centred care from first symptoms to end of life. This article summarises the key aspects of HF management for general practice including new areas of diagnostics and drug therapy.
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Taylor et al. (2017) conducted a review in Heart failure. The European Primary Care Cardiovascular Society provides practical guidance on heart failure management in primary care, emphasizing natriuretic peptide testing for diagnosis and evidence-based therapies.