76-A View of the Quality of Life of Patients with Heart Failure as a Prescription Drug (original) (raw)

INTRODUCTION Heart failure (HF) is a chronic non-communicable disease whose prevalence in the population gets to be 1-2%. At older ages, mainly between 65 and 67 years, this percentage rises to 23% (ERIKSSON et al, 1987), becoming serious problem in the elderly. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), heart failure (HF) is, among all chronic diseases, the most troubling in the health sector in the world. Although there are great advances in medicine over the past five decades, currently, mortality reaches more than 50% of confirmed cases in five years, after the confirmation of diagnosis (ANDERSON, B.; WAAGSTEIN, F., 1993, HO et al, 1993). Although there is no consensus on the criteria necessary to establish a diagnosis of heart failure, it is evident that this condition can represent a major health problem. It was estimated that the HF reaches nearly 4 million Americans with 400,000 new cases each year (MASSIE, B.M., PACKER, M., 1990). According to DBIC (2012), it was obs...