OBJECTIVES: Patients admitted by heart failure (HF) have usually altered their health related quality of life (HRQoL). The objective was to analyze baseline differences in HRQoL by gender in patients admitted by HF through the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure questionnaire (MLHFQ), SF-36 and EQ-5D.

METHODS: This was a prospective study with 1786 patients admitted by HF in Spain. Patients completed questionnaires during their hospitalization. The MLHFQ is a specific instrument covering an overall scale (range, 0–105), a physical (range, 0–40) and emotional (range, 0–25) subscales, with higher scores indicating worse HRQoL. We used physical (PCS) and mental (MCS) components summary of the SF-36 (range, 0–100; the lower the worse), and the EQ-5D utility index (range, -0.65–1) and EQ-VAS (range, 0–100), with lower scores indicating a worse HRQoL. The t-test was used to compare the HRQoL scores by gender, and the general linear model was used to study the influence of gender on HRQoL adjusting for age, Charlson comorbidity index and previous admissions.

RESULTS: We included 1786 patients with a mean age of 77.9 (SD=9.8) being 888 (49.7%) women. There were 617 (34.6%) patients with Charlson ≥3 and 645 (36.1%) had been previously admitted by HF. Women had worse baseline HRQoL in all studied dimensions when admitting at hospital (p<0.001). After adjusting, the effect of gender remained significant in all dimensions (p<0.001). Charlson index (p<0.0001) and previous admissions (p<0.05) had significant influence in all dimensions (p<0.001). Patients with Charlson ≥3 and those with previous admissions had worse HRQoL. Age was significantly related to PCS (p<0.0001), EQ-5D index (p<0.0001) and EQ-VAS (p=0.0430), being the oldest those with worse HRQoL.

CONCLUSIONS: This study provides new insights into the fact that women with HF are admitted in worse status regarding HRQoL, adjusting for age, Charlson index and previous admissions by HF.