Epidemiological profile, cardiopulmonary fitness and health-related quality of life of patients with heart failure: a longitudinal study.

Background: Heart failure (HF) is a severe and self-limiting syndrome. Its signs and symptoms are believed to predict poorer health-related quality of life scores, which are mainly influenced by deterioration in physical capacity. In the present study we try to analyze the influence of clinical and socioeconomic characteristics and physical capacity on the quality of life of people with HF diagnosis.

Methods: A longitudinal study was conducted over 2 years with patients diagnosed with HF. To evaluate the patients the method of face-to-face visit and telephone monitoring was used. In the evaluations were applied: the Clinical and Socioeconomic Characterization Questionnaire, the Minnesota Living With Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ) for quality of life evaluation and the Veterans Specific Activity Questionnaire (VSAQ) for cardiopulmonary fitness analysis. Measures of central tendency, proportion, normality test, confidence intervals, comparison of data through paired Student t test and Wilcoxon or Mann Whitney test were performed and correlations were verified through Spearman coefficient.

Results: The study included 108 patients, most of them female (50.90%) and mean age of 66.62 ± 11.33 years. The median time of HF diagnosis was 5 ± 6 years, being Chagas' disease the main etiologic cause for the disease (57.40%). As for the clinical condition, functional classes II (44.40%) and III (48.10%) of the New York Heart Association (NYHA) were the most frequent. There was a low cardiopulmonary fitness, with loss of capacity to perform daily activities (3 ± 1 to 3 ± 3) over the time of clinical follow-up. There was an increase in the MLHFQ instrument scores, from 50.98 ± 15.52 to 61.76 ± 19.95, over the analysis time. The analysis of correlations demonstrated that variables such as schooling, NYHA class, echocardiographic alterations and the drug profile have a significant relationship with the constructs of quality of life and physical fitness.

Conclusion: Individuals in HF have significant impairment of cardiorespiratory capacity and tend to present worsening of QL along the evolution of the disease.