Palliative Care Use Low in Patients With Heart Failure
By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Nov. 13, 2024 -- Use of palliative care for heart failure remains low in the United States, according to a study recently published online in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Zidong Zhang, Ph.D., from the Saint Louis University School of Medicine, and colleagues investigated national palliative care use for adults with heart failure. A national all‐payer electronic health record database was used to identify 127,712 adults with newly diagnosed heart failure (2011 to 2018) and to determine when they received their first palliative care consultation and the associations with clinical factors following diagnosis of heart failure.
During a median 792 days of follow-up, 18.3 percent of patients received palliative care consultation in five years. The researchers found that shorter time to receive palliative care consultation was associated with diagnoses of heart failure in 2016 to 2018 (compared with 2010 to 2015: adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.421), as well as advanced heart failure diagnosis (aHR, 2.065), cardiogenic shock (aHR, 2.587), implantable cardioverter‐defibrillator use (aHR, 5.718), and visits at academic medical centers (aHR, 1.439). There was variance in palliative care uptake for early/moderate heart failure stages by race, geographics, payer, and selection of advanced treatments.
"Barriers to palliative care should [be] addressed at a systemic level, including educating patients and providers on the role and benefits of palliative care consultation, expanding the palliative care service availability, making consensus practice guidelines, and reforming the payment method," the authors write.
Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.
© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Posted November 2024
Read this next
32 Percent of U.S. Adults Consumed Fast Food on a Given Day in 2021 to 2023
FRIDAY, June 27, 2025 -- Over 30 percent of adults and children consumed fast food on a given day during August 2021 to August 2023, according to two reports from the National...
Empagliflozin Has Kidney Protective Effects in Acute Myocardial Infarction
THURSDAY, June 26, 2025 -- Empagliflozin has kidney protective effects and reduces heart failure outcomes across baseline kidney function among patients with acute myocardial...
Quality Improvement Initiative Ups Adherence to Medical Therapy for Heart Failure
MONDAY, June 23, 2025 -- For patients with heart failure, hospital participation in the IMPLEMENT-HF initiative improves adherence to quadruple medication therapy (QMT), defined...
More news resources
- FDA Medwatch Drug Alerts
- Daily MedNews
- News for Health Professionals
- New Drug Approvals
- New Drug Applications
- Drug Shortages
- Clinical Trial Results
- Generic Drug Approvals
Subscribe to our newsletter
Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.