Heart Failure In The Xxi Century. Epidemiology And Socioeconomic Features

Heart failure is a disabling, expensive, common disease. Acute coronary syndrome's treatment, secondary prevention and increase in the longevity are augmenting his prevalence. The main social consequence is the increase of the hospital admissions that means 65% of the cost of the disease with the lost of quality life and the blockade of sanitary resources. Heart treatment demands to act on the morbimortality of the disease. To modify the morbidity carries to reduce the hospital admissions, main responsible for the economic cost of the disease. Heart failure is the third cause of death in the developed countries, behind ischaemic cardiac disease and cerebrovascular disease causing in Spain 4-8% of all the deaths (men-women, respectively). The benefit of the pharmacological treatment is in the prolongation of life and it expresses as life-years. The cost of the treatments and care that are used in the patients' management with heart failure represents between 1-2% of all sanitary resources in developed countries and this percentage is increasing.