[The elderly patient with heart failure at hospital cardiology units]

Abstract

The majority of patients hospitalized for heart failure are elderly. In order to point out the clinical characteristics and the quality of care of elderly heart failure patients we evaluated available data from national databases and observational studies. Elderly patients have more severe clinical manifestations, multiple etiologies and comorbid diseases, frequent hospital admissions and a worse prognosis. As many as 30-50% of elderly patients with heart failure may have normal systolic function. In the elderly, evidence-based treatments are relatively underused with often inappropriately low doses. However, this "underuse" largely depends on the higher "frailty" of these patients (i.e. multiple coexisting diseases, disability, socio-environmental factors) and the lack of definite evidence on efficacy and safety of treatments in the very elderly. Thus, there are opportunities to improve quality in many aspects of care, such as instrumental and multidimensional assessment and out-of-hospital management. Targeted clinical trials and rigorous observational studies to favor the implementation of specific guidelines into clinical practice in the elderly are needed.