Pathophysiology, causes and epidemiology of chronic heart failure

Abstract

The prevalence of heart failure in developed countries is about 1–2 % in general and in patients above 70 years over 10 %. HFpEF is the cause of heart failure from 22 to 73 %, exact data are not available. If compared with HFrEF, patients with HFpEF are older, more frequent women with hypertension and atrial fibrillation, but less myocardial in-farction in their history. Heart failure is a hemodynamic disorder and the pathophysiologic basis is cardiac output, cardiac contractility, filling pressures, wall stress during systolic and diastolic function and heart rate. The neurohu-moral activation is very important for the diagnosis as well as prognosis and the most sensitive seems to be brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), respectively the precursor NT-proBNP, which become a part of the new diagnostic classification and are a part of modern treatment.