The heart failure rate among Medicare beneficiaries declined from 2011 to 2016, according to new research published in JAMA Network Open. The study’s authors explored what this might tell us mean about patient care in the United States.
The analysis included data from nearly 1.8 million Medicare beneficiaries who are at a high risk of developing heart failure. The median patient age was 73 years old, and 56% of patients were female. Overall, heart failure incidence dropped from 35.7 cases per 1,000 Medicare beneficiaries in 2011 to 26.5 per 1,000 Medicare beneficiaries in 2016. The decline was more significant among patients with prevalent hypertension, diabetes and obesity.
These findings, the authors explained, may be due to improvements in how physicians manage patients with various heart failure risk factors. If patients with hypertension, diabetes and obesity receive more helpful treatment, in other words, it makes sense that fewer of those patients would go on to be diagnosed with heart failure. The authors emphasized that their study does not confirm, without a doubt, that this is the case—but it is certainly one way to interpret the team’s findings.
On the less encouraging side of things, the authors also identified an increase in heart failure incidence among acute myocardial infarction (MI) patients and patients with atrial fibrillation (AFib).
This finding, the team noted, shows areas where there is still a critical need for better heart failure prevention strategies.
“Management of patients with coronary artery disease and other risk factors, such as diabetes, with novel therapies like sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors may reduce the downstream risk of heart failure,” wrote lead author Rohan Khera, MD, MS, department of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues. “In addition, more effective and evidence-based management of AFib with rhythm control strategies, such as catheter ablation, may also contribute to lower heart failure risk. Future studies are needed to assess whether greater uptake of these therapeutic strategies over time may alter the trajectory of heart failure incidence among these patient populations.”
The full JAMA Network Open study can be read here.
Michael has more than 16 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.