Top Things to Know: Promoting Self Care in Heart Failure
Published: August 31, 2009
- In 2009, healthcare costs for heart failure (HF) reached over 37 billion dollars with over one million HF patients discharged from the hospital.
- Strategies to optimize HF patient care and health outcomes are essential for reducing clinical and economic burdens of this chronic disease as numbers of individuals affected by HF will continue to rise over the next decade.
- Ultimately, most care is done in the home by HF patients, their families or other caregivers, yet the promotion of patient self-care has received relatively little systematic attention from researchers.
- This statement synthesizes the importance of self-care in the management of heart failure and the current state of evidence-based clinical practice.
- Aspects of self-care of particular importance in the HF patient include symptom management, medication adherence, and nutrition and physical activity considerations. Unfortunately, factors that make self-care difficult for patients include the presence of depression, anxiety, comorbidities, sleep disturbances, and level of cognitive function.
- A systematic approach for health care providers can help families promote HF care is outlined for use in clinical practice.
- Important gaps exist within the health care system that deter self-care promotion in HF.
- This paper outlines a primary goal for clinicians to understand how to incorporate a systematic and focused approach for self care-care promotion when involved in the treatment of HF patients.
- The primary goal for researchers is to develop innovative investigative methods which assess and quantify multidimensional aspects regarding the level of self-care needed to improve outcomes.
- Physiological research using measures of neurohormonal, inflammatory, and hemodynamic function is needed to establish mechanisms by which HF self-care influence outcomes.
Citation
Riegel B et al; on behalf of the American Heart Association Council on Cardiovascular Nursing, Council on Clinical Cardiology, Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism, and Interdisciplinary Council on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research. State of the science: promoting self-care in persons with heart failure, a scientific statement from the American Heart Association. Circulation 2009: published online before print August 31, 2009, 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.109.192628. http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/reprint/CIRCULATIONAHA.109.192628