Trends in survival of Swedish men and women with heart failure from 1987 to 2014: a population‐based case–control study

Abstract

Abstract Aims To compare trends in short‐term and long‐term survival of patients with heart failure (HF) compared with controls from the general population. Methods and results We used data from the Swedish National Inpatient Registry to identify all patients aged ≥18 years with a first recorded diagnosis of HF between 1 January 1987 and 31 December 2014 and compared them with controls matched on age and sex from the Total Population Register. We included 702 485 patients with HF and 1 306 183 controls. In patients with HF aged 18–64 years, short‐term (29 days to 6 months) and long‐term mortality (>11 years) decreased from 166 and 76.6 per 1000 person‐years in 1987 to 2000 to 99.6 and 49.4 per 1000 person‐years, respectively, in 2001 to 2014. During the same period, mortality improved marginally, in those aged ≥65 years: short‐time mortality from 368.8 to 326.2 per 1000 person‐years and long‐term mortality from 219.6 to 193.9 per 1000 person‐years. In 1987–2000, patients aged 11 years) increased moderately from 2.49 (95% CI 2.41–2.57) and 3.16 (95% CI 3.07–3.24) in 1987–2000 to 4.35 (95% CI 4.09–4.63) and 4.11 (95% CI 3.49–4.85) in 2001–2014, largely because survival among controls improved more than that among patients with HF (P < 0.0001). Conclusions Absolute survival improved in HF patients aged <65 years, but only marginally so in those aged ≥65 years. Compared with controls, both short‐term and long‐term relative risk of dying increased, especially in younger patients with HF.

Keywords

• Heart failure
• Survival
• Mortality
• Trends
• Population
• Epidemiology