Enrollment in Heart Failure Registry Reduces Mortality

Heart failure (HF) patients enlisted in a registry receive better medication and have a lower risk of death than unregistered patients, according to a new study.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital conducted a Swedish nationwide prospective cohort study involving 231,437 patients (41% women; 68% inpatients, mean age 74 years) with new-onset HF registered in the Swedish National Patient Registry (NPR) between 2006 and 2013, with or without concurrent registration in the Swedish Heart Failure Registry (SwedeHF, also known as RiksSvikt), a voluntary quality reporting registry.

The researchers found that 9.5% of the NPR patients were also registered in the SwedeHF; the other 90.5% were not. Over a median follow-up of 874 days, patients registered in the SwedeHF Registry receive better medication, and had a 35% lower risk of death than those registered in the NPR alone. Variables independently associated with enrolment in the SwedeHF included male sex, younger age, higher education, absent co-morbidities, and use of HF and cardiovascular medications. The study was published on February 23, 2017, in the European Journal of Heart Failure.

“Patients who were registered in RiksSvikt were more likely to receive heart failure medications than unregistered patients, and that this to a large extent explained the difference in survival,” said lead author Lars Lund, MD, of the Karolinska Institutet department of medicine. “In heart failure, quality reporting translates directly into better survival. It is imperative that the investment in registries from the government, hospitals, and clinicians continues to expand, as this will lead to better patient survival.”

SwedeHF is an internet-based registry where participating units register their HF patient on-line, using transferred data from standardized forms or from computerized patients records. It was created in order to provide participants with knowledge on how they diagnosed, and subsequently treated, their HF patients. The information indicates in what areas further efforts are needed in order to optimize patient management.