European journal of heart failure
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Eur. J. Heart Fail. · Feb 2010
ReviewMeasurement of breathlessness in clinical trials in patients with chronic heart failure: the need for a standardized approach: a systematic review.
Chronic breathlessness is a major symptom for patients with compensated chronic heart failure (CHF) and its impact is different to the breathlessness resulting from pulmonary oedema. This systematic review aims to establish which tools have been used for research into the subjective severity of breathlessness in patients with compensated CHF and to discuss recommendations for the future. ⋯ Despite breathlessness being an important and limiting problem for patients with CHF, we found no consensus on which tool should be used for breathlessness severity, little methodological research to develop such a tool, and a lack of focus on breathlessness as a symptom. A consistent approach to studying breathlessness in patients with CHF is needed in order to make headway in managing this key patient priority.
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Eur. J. Heart Fail. · May 2009
ReviewPalliative care in heart failure: a position statement from the palliative care workshop of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology.
Heart failure is a serious condition and equivalent to malignant disease in terms of symptom burden and mortality. At this moment only a comparatively small number of heart failure patients receive specialist palliative care. ⋯ Additional objectives included improving the accessibility and quality of palliative care for heart failure patients and promoting the development of heart failure-orientated palliative care services across Europe. This document represents a synthesis of the presentations and discussion during the workshop and describes recommendations in the area of delivery of quality care to patients and families, education, treatment coordination, research and policy.
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Eur. J. Heart Fail. · Jun 2005
ReviewQuality-of-life measurement in chronic heart failure: do we take account of the patient perspective?
The modern management of chronic heart failure has led to improved life expectancy, functioning and health-related quality of life (HRQL). HRQL measures the effects of an illness or a treatment from the patient's perspective. ⋯ Because most of the widely used measures are not patient centred, they may lack sensitivity and specificity in determining those aspects of HRQL important to individual patients. This paper reviews the use of quality-of-life assessment tools in the evaluation of patients with heart failure.
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Eur. J. Heart Fail. · Mar 2005
ReviewLife-saving or life-prolonging? Interpreting trial data and survival curves for patients with congestive heart failure.
Chronic heart failure is responsible for considerable suffering and mortality throughout the world. Clinical trials have consistently demonstrated the benefits of pharmacological therapies such as angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and beta-adrenoceptor blockers. ⋯ The time benefit in survival is not usually reported in clinical trials, which are conducted over fixed time points and report risk reductions during this period only. In this paper, we discuss the use of prolongation of life statistics as an outcome measure in clinical trials and review simple techniques for calculating the lifetime benefit of pharmacological intervention in heart failure using data from a number of major studies