Abstract

CINZA SANJURJO, S.; CABARCOS ORTIZ DE BARRON, A.; NIETO POL, E.  and  TORRE CARBALLADA, J.A.. Cross - sectional analysis of heart failure in patients intaked in the Service of Internal Medicine at a third level hospital: Part 1: Epidemiologic analysis. An. Med. Interna (Madrid) [online]. 2007, vol.24, n.6, pp.267-272. ISSN 0212-7199.

Objectives: To observe the epidemiologic caractheristics of the patients intaked during five years in a internal medicine department, with heart failure. Methods: A cross-sectional study of the intaked patients in the Internal Medicine Service in the Hospital Clínico Universitario de Santiago de Compostela between 1999 to 2003. The variables analized were: sex, age, days of hospital stay, number of intaked by failure cardiac, reason for admission (guide symptom), hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cardiac disease, fibrillation atrium, previous treatment with beta-blockers, blood pressure in the admission moment, to make echocardiography, disfunction systolic, etiology, deceased, treatment at the end. The statistical analysis was performed with cualitative and cuantitative measures, chi-cuadrado and t-student, and multivariant analyses. Results: 248 patients were accepted for the study. We observed more women than men (55.2%) and bigger median age (79 years oldvs. 73 years old in men, p < 0.001). The mean income was 13.61 days and a median of 11 days. The 41,8% of the patients had hypertension, 30.9% diabetes mellitus and 81,9% had someone heart disease. The aetiologies of heart failure most frequents were ischemic cardiopathy (27.2%) and hypertension (24.2%). The most frequent simptom was the dyspnea (68.9%). It made echocardiography in 20.9% of patients and 45.1% showed systolic disfuntion. The only factor related with this small percentage of echocardiographies was the incoming time. The most frequent etiology was respiratories infections (39.5%). The 8.6% of patients was decesed. The pharmacologic treatment more prescribed were the diuretics (86.9%) and transcutaneus nitrates (49.5%). It was indicated ECAI or AAR-II in the 86.9% of patients and beta-blockers in 0.9%. Conclusions: The number of echocardiograms practiced to the patients is smaller that the number advised by international associations and smaller to the cardiologist registers. The beta-blockers and ECAI use is smaller too.

Keywords : Heart failure; Epidemiology; Echocardiogram.

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