Quality of life as an independent predictor for cardiacevents and death in patients with heart failure

Background: Little is known about health-related quality of life (QOL) in Japanese patients with heart failure.The purpose of this study was to identify factors related to QOL using a disease-specific QOL instrument, andto clarify whether QOL independently predicts clinical outcomes among Japanese patients with heart failure.Methods and Results: A total of 114 outpatients with heart failure were enrolled (mean age 64.7±15.8 years;73.7% males). The Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ) to assess patient's QOL was used.At baseline, depressive symptoms and chronic kidney disease were significantly associated with worse QOL inmultiple regression analysis. During a 2-year follow up, patients with a MLHFQ score ≥26, indicating worse QOL,had a higher incidence of the combined endpoint of cardiac death or hospitalization for heart failure, and a higherall-cause mortality than those with a score <26 (25.3% vs. 7.5%, P=0.011; 18.5% vs. 6.4%, P=0.018; respectively).Multivariate Cox proportional hazard models demonstrated that a higher MLHFQ score was significantly associatedwith increased risks of cardiac events (hazard ratio, 1.02, 95% confidential interval, 1.001-1.05, P=0.038)and of all-cause death (hazard ratio, 1.04, 95% confidential interval, 1.02-1.07, P=0.001).Conclusions: Depressive symptoms and chronic kidney disease are major determinants of impaired QOL, andthe MLHFQ score is an independent predictor of both cardiac events and death among Japanese patients withheart failure.