Purpose of review: As medicine strives to become more patient-centered, patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are often used to describe patients' symptoms, function, and quality of life. This review describes the key concepts of PROs specific to heart failure in clinical trials and their potential role in clinical practice.
Recent findings: As the Food and Drug Administration has increasingly emphasized how it values PROs as clinical outcome assessments, including its recent qualification of the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ), clinical trials have increasingly used them to evaluate novel therapies. This has been enhanced by an increasing understanding of how to interpret KCCQ scores. Its use in clinical practice, including the importance of providers sharing results with their patients, is just emerging. PROs provide unique insights into the benefits of treatment from patients' perspectives and while their role in clinical care is just beginning, they offer an important opportunity to improve the patient-centeredness of care.
Keywords: Cardiomyopathy; Clinical care; Heart failure; KCCQ; Patient-centered care; Patient-reported outcomes.