Heart failure in community practice: relationship to age and sex in a beta-blocker registry.

Abstract

Women and the elderly are underrepresented in clinical trials of heart failure (HF). The authors analyzed, by sex and age groups, a registry of 4280 community patients initiating carvedilol for HF. Women (n=1485) were older than men (n=2793) and had worse functional class with higher left ventricular ejection fraction and blood pressure. Women also had more HF hospitalizations, less use of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, and lower doses of carvedilol. Nevertheless, during 1-year follow-up, both groups experienced greater than 40% reductions in HF hospitalizations (P