Clinimetric analysis of heart failure in Mexican patients

Heart failure (HF) is a syndrome characterized basically by a circulatory deficit to cover the metabolic and energetic demands of the body. This condition has a broad spectrum in its clinical presentation, affects the quality of life significantly, impacts the family/social environment, and generates a great demand for health services. The purpose of this research is to report the situational diagnose of patients with HF in Mexico. We evaluated 292 patients, 70.2% were men. Average age was 56.7 ± 14.3 years. Ischemic heart disease is the main etiology (98 patients, 33.9%) followed by hypertensive (22.6%) and idiopathic (23.3%) heart disease. The associated clinical background was obesity (31.1%), systemic hypertension (36.7%), myocardial infarction (26.4%), and dyslipidemia (15.1%). The most common symptom was stress dyspnea (41.4%) and jugular vein engorgement at physical examination (32.5%). Anemia was observed in 1% of patients. The average left ventricular ejection fraction was 29.2 ± 10.6%. Sinus rhythm was the most frequently detected in 84.9%. 19.9% of patients had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator or cardiac resynchronization therapy. 13.7% of patients with QRS > 130 ms. In our population, the meta-analysis global group in chronic heart failure risk score calculated was 16.8 ± 5.7 and for EMPHASIS 3.3 ± 1.5. We observed that age at presentation in HF in this analysis is at least 10 years younger than in other reports. The grade of obesity takes relevance in our group. The association of anemia and HF in Mexico is rare.