Missed Opportunities in the Diagnosis of Heart Failure: Evaluation of Pathways to Determine Sources of Delay to Specialist Evaluation.
Curr Heart Fail Rep
; 19(4): 247-253, 2022 08.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2003761
ABSTRACT
Missed opportunities are incidents where different actions by those involved could have resulted in more desirable events. Heart failure is a complex clinical syndrome presenting as symptoms and signs common to other diagnoses, in patients frequently with multiple co-morbidities. Heart failure itself is not a diagnosis, but is the common clinical presentation of a variety of cardiac conditions. Correct diagnosis involves amalgamation of the clinical presentation, the results of general and specific investigations, and the clinician's ability to synthesize the overall picture. It is not surprising therefore that misdiagnosis can occur at any level of the heart failure journey and can occur because of patient, clinician, and health economy related factors. Delayed diagnosis leads to excess morbidity and mortality in these patients. In this review, we define the pathways for diagnosis of heart failure and then highlight missed opportunities related to delay and misdiagnosis. In addition, we consider how the earlier opportunity may impact patients, clinicians and health services.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Heart Failure
Type of study:
Diagnostic study
/
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Curr Heart Fail Rep
Journal subject:
Cardiology
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S11897-022-00551-4
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