New Heart Failure Medications Aim To Fill Significant Gaps in Treatment

摘要

Heart failure (HF) affects an esti-mated 26 million people world-wide. In the United States, 5.6 million individuals are estimated to have the condition, resulting in nearly $30 billion in health care-associated costs. In westernized countries, acute decompensated HF is the leading cause for hospital admissions and is associated with a three-month post-discharge mortality rate of 7% to 11%. The risk for this disease increases as a person ages, with an estimated 8.4% prevalence in those 75 years of age and older, compared with 0.7% of the population 45 to 54 years of age. With the geriatric population expected to double to more than 80 million by 2050, HF can be expected to have an increasingly substantial impact on the U.S. health care system.