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Posted 10/15/2010

(NAPSI) - With the population of older Americans growing faster than ever, the incidence of heart failure is also on the rise at an alarming rate. More than 5 million Americans currently suffer from heart failure, a condition in which the heart muscle is unable to pump effectively enough to meet the body’s need for blood and oxygen. The progressive weakening of the heart muscle is most commonly caused by an infection, high blood pressure or a previous heart attack.

“As treatment has improved for other cardiac conditions, especially heart attacks, more patients are surviving this short-term event only to develop heart failure later. This is one of the primary reasons heart failure is a growing condition,” said Gregg C. Fonarow, M.D., professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles. “While significant medical advancements have been made to better treat this patient population, we’re now finding that physicians aren’t consistently following recommended treatment guidelines, which is causing a major gap in the quality of medical care heart failure patients receive.”

To help provide consistency of care and ensure heart failure patients have equal access to quality care, the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology have developed evidence-based treatment guidelines for clinicians. Additionally, quality improvement programs are being implemented across the nation to encourage physicians to follow the guidelines, and a new study shows these programs are paying off.

According to a study published in the American Heart Association’s journal, Circulation, the implementation of a program targeting cardiologists and consisting of educational workshops and decision-support tools encouraging them to follow evidence-based treatment guidelines is working and helping provide better and more consistent treatment for thousands of heart failure patients.

The IMPROVE HF (The Registry to Improve the Use of Evidence-Based Heart Failure Therapies in the Outpatient Setting) study, funded by Medtronic, Inc., involved nearly 35,000 heart failure patients from 167 cardiology practices, making it the largest U.S. outpatient heart failure clinical study. Physicians participating in the two-year trial received process-improvement tools aimed to increase their use of guideline-recommended therapies and ultimately advance the quality of care they provide to patients. Researchers report that the effort has proven successful. In fact, the study showed that cardiology practices implementing the process improvement program significantly increased use of five out of seven guideline-recommended care measures, including implantable medical device therapy and standard heart failure drug treatments.

“The IMPROVE HF study offers new hope to the millions of Americans suffering from heart failure,” said Fonarow, who is also co-chair of the IMPROVE HF Scientific Steering Committee. “If adopted by physicians nationwide, the evidence-based treatment guidelines could positively impact the overall standard of care for heart failure patients, potentially preventing thousands of deaths and hospitalizations each year.”

To learn more about heart failure and appropriate treatment options, visit www.ImproveHF.com.