Aims: To describe the epidemiology of hospital admissions for heart failure in 32 hospitals. To define the profile of those attended by Internal Medicine (IM).
Methods and results: Analysis of the Minimum-Basic-Data-Set registry of 32 public Spanish hospitals, during 1998-2002, identifying those cases whose main or secondary diagnosis was heart failure, with attention to age, sex, length of stay, season, outcome, number of diagnoses, Diagnostic Related Groups (DRG), and coded procedures. There were 2,787,008 discharges, 27,248 with heart failure (15,737 IM, 7,735 Cardiology and 3,776 other services). Discharges for heart failure increase from 1998 to 2002 (r(2) = 0.7232). Of the total, 44% were men (average age 70.98 years; 95% CI 70.08-70.47) and 56% were women (74.77 years; 95% CI 74.61-74.93; p < 0.0001). The global in-hospital mortality rate was 11.1% and we found differences between Cardiology and MI. MI patients were older (74 years compared to 69, p < 0.0001), had greater comorbidity, a similar length of stay (11.1 days), and a lower number of coded diagnostic procedures. Associated pathologies were different. Seasonal variation is clear.
Conclusion: The incidence of discharges for heart failure is high and steadily increasing, although this is more evident in IM. The populations attended by the two services are different, which makes it difficult to ascertain differences in handling. The results are slightly different from those reported in other countries.