Heart failure and health related quality of life

Rui Coelho¹^,5 , Sónia Ramos²^,5 , Joana Prata³^,5 , Paulo Bettencourt⁴^,5 , António Ferreira⁴^,5 and Mário Cerqueira-Gomes⁴^,5

¹Department of Psychiatry, Hospital de S. João, Porto Medical School, Porto, Portugal

²Department of Psychiatry, Hospital de Magalhães Lemos, Porto, Portugal

³Department of Psychiatry, Centro Hospitalar de Vila Nova de Gaia, Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal

⁴Department of Internal Medicine, Hospital de S. João, Porto, Portugal

⁵Unit of Cardiovascular Research and Development. Hospital de S. João, Porto Medical School, Porto, Portugal

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Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health 2005, 1:19doi:10.1186/1745-0179-1-19


Published:	4 October 2005

Abstract

Quality of life is a major goal in the context of preventive and therapeutic cardiology. It is important, both as an outcome measure in clinical trials of congestive heart failure (CHF) and as a consideration in individual physicians' therapeutic decisions. In this article, quality of life concepts are reviewed, methods of measurement are explored and clinically significant changes on prognosis are discussed. There is a need for more research which is based on carefully selected measures of quality of life chosen as being of particular importance to patients and to the hypotheses being tested.