Health Status Trajectories Among Outpatients With Heart Failure

Context: Health status (i.e., symptoms, function, and quality of life) is an important palliative care outcome in patients with heart failure; however, patterns of health status over time (i.e., trajectories) are not well described.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to identify health status trajectories in outpatients with heart failure and assess whether depression, symptom burden, or sense of peace predict health status trajectory.

Methods: This is an observational study utilizing data from the Patient-Centered Disease Management for Heart Failure trial. Participants completed Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaires at baseline, three, six, and 12 months. Latent class growth analysis identified health status trajectories; multinomial logistic regression models identified predictors of trajectory membership.

Results: Patients (n = 384) were primarily men (97%) and older (mean age 67.6 ± 10.1). Three health status trajectories were identified. All three trajectories improved at three months; however, the marked improvement health status trajectory (n = 19) showed progressive improvement over one year, whereas the poor (n = 119) and moderate (n = 246) health status trajectories had little change after three months. In adjusted analyses, worse baseline depression (odds ratio 1.10; 95% confidence interval 1.01-1.20), symptom burden (1.45; 1.15-1.83), and sense of peace (0.41; 0.22-0.75) predicted membership in the poor vs. moderate health status trajectory.

Conclusion: We identified three one-year health status trajectories in patients with heart failure, with the two most common trajectories characterized by early improvement followed by limited change. Future research should assess these findings in nonveterans and women and explore whether treatment of depression, high symptom burden, and low sense of peace leads to improved long-term heart failure health status trajectory.