Blood pressure in heart failure management and prevention

Hypertension is a leading cause of heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases. Its role in the pathogenesis of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) differs from that in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Moreover, rigorous blood pressure control may reduce the incidence of heart failure. However, once heart failure develops, prognosis is affected by blood pressure, which may differ between patients with and without heart failure. Therefore, the association between guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT) for heart failure and its uptitration must be considered for blood pressure management and should not be overlooked. Heart failure medications affect the blood pressure and efficacy per baseline blood pressure value. This review discusses the potential mechanisms by which hypertension leads to HFrEF or HFpEF, the impact of hypertension on incident heart failure, and the recommended approaches for blood pressure management in patients with heart failure. </p

Heart failure around the world

With increasingly large sample sizes required to demonstrate event reduction, heart failure outcome trials are no longer being performed in a small group of selected patients and countries, but at a global scale with worldwide contribution of patients from countries with considerable differences in background therapy, socioeconomic status and healthcare practices. Recent studies have highlighted how socioeconomic determinants rather than geographical factors may underlie the heterogeneity of patient populations across the globe. Therefore, in this review, we evaluated (i) regional differences in patient characteristics and outcomes in recent epidemiologic studies; (ii) regional differences in worldwide representativeness of clinical trial populations; and (iii) the role of socioeconomic determinants in driving country differences in heart failure trial enrolment and clinical outcomes