Prognostic Factors in Heart Failure: Poverty Amidst a Wealth of Variables

Abstract

Although life expectancy is a concept that everyone understands and attempts to prolong life are widely appreciated, the traditional physician-patient relation usually is based on short-term goals such as an improvement in quality of life, rather than on the more nebulous attempt to delay death. Nonetheless. Early death occurs with such alarming frequency in patients with chronic heart failure that a reduction in its incidence has emerged as an important goal in the management of these patients