Prevention cited in heart failure dip

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TORONTO, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- The number of new cases of heart failure in Ontario decreased 33 percent from 1997 to 2007 possibly due to preventive efforts, Canadian researchers say.

Jack Tu of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto and University of Toronto, and colleagues examined heart failure data in Ontario from 1997 to 2007, in a large group representative of the population involving 419,551 incident cases of heart failure -- 216,190 requiring admission to hospital and the remaining 203,361 managed as outpatients at the time of initial diagnosis.

The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, found patients age 65 and older represented 80 percent of the total number of cases. Patients who were admitted to hospital were older and had more health issues, such as heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, compared with those not requiring admission.

"We saw a 32.7 percent decline in the incidence of heart failure cases in Ontario between 1997 and 2007, which translates to a 3 percent average annual decline; this is similar to the rates of decline previously observed in overall cardiovascular disease mortality and incidence of ischemic heart disease events in Canada," Tu said in a statement.

The authors suggest the decline in heart failure rates may be due to preventive efforts to better control smoking, blood pressure and cholesterol, which can lower the rates of ischemic heart disease, a leading cause of heart failure.