Abstract
Background
There is a lack of local clinical epidemiological data describing the different heart failure (HF) phenotypes in Bulgaria.
Objective
Our goal was to describe the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with HF in two cardiological hospitals. The primary objective was to describe the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with HF in two cardiological hospitals. The secondary objective was to further specify the profile of chronic HF patients by describing HF phenotype and the current treatment patterns of hospitalized patients. Primary and secondary outcome measures corresponding to the objectives were descriptive in nature.
Methods
This was a retrospective non-interventional study based on secondary anonymous pooled database analyses on management of patients with HF. The retrospective data was provided by Sqilline's Danny Platform® – analytics AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform for real-world data.
Results
The total number of patients with heart failure as main diagnosis or as comorbidity, or heart failure patients, treated on outpatient basis was 1313 (8%) as of 31th of March, 2019. The number of patients with heart failure as main diagnosis in the inpatient care was 413. The mean age of the patients was 69.77 years and more than 50% of hospitalized patients were males. Ejection fraction was available in 352 HF patients in the inpatient care as follows: 40-49% in 48 patients, less than 40% in 67 patients and more than 50% in 240 patients. The most frequently observed comorbidity in hospitalized patients with two or more comorbidities (66.1%) was as follows: hypertensive heart disease with heart failure (78.0%), atrial fibrillation and flutter (42.1%).
Conclusions
We succeeded in describing the demographic and clinical characteristics of 413 HF patients in Bulgaria. Digitalization in healthcare is an unmet need which should be addressed on a broad societal scale requiring all stakeholders to be involved.