UCLA researchers develop risk calculator to predict survival in heart failure patients

A UCLA team has developed an easy-to-use "risk calculator" that helps predict heart failure patients' chances of survival for up to five years and assists doctors in determining whether more or less aggressive treatment is appropriate.   Given that heart failure impacts more than 5 million Americans and numerous variables affect patient outcomes, this type of risk-assessment tool can be very helpful to physicians and patients in assessing prognosis over time and guiding medical decision-making, the researchers say.   Their new risk model is featured in the January edition of the journal Circulation: Heart Failure.   Since heart failure manifests differently in men and women, the team initially sought to create a sex-specific risk model for greater accuracy, an approach that hadn't been taken before. But they discovered that separate risk models for men and women weren't necessary.   "We were extremely surprised that the same exact top predictors of risk were identical in both men and women," said senior author Dr. Tamara Horwich, an assistant professor of medicine in the cardiology division at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "We ultimately only needed to create one unified heart failure risk model for both sexes."   Heart failure occurs when the heart can no longer pump enough blood to the body's other organs. Often, patients with heart failure have reduced left-ventricle ejection fraction, which indicates a lowered volume of blood b...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news