We need more regional heart failure clinics in Slovakia in real life

E-mail: sanus@zoznam.sk Purpose: At this time we have only three active heart failure (HF) clinics in the metropolitan areas of Slovakia and no organised HF disease management programme exists in rural, regional settings. Patients and Methods: We compared clinical characteristics, evidence-based medications and outcomes in 118 patients (pts) from one regional centre with other centres in Slovakia (n = 306) that participated in the Heart Failure Long-Term registry. We statistically analysed the reasons for differences in the benchmark report. Results: In the regional centre, the patients significantly (p 5), with non-ischemic etiology (71.2% vs 41.7%, OR 3.46, predominantly valvular etiology), more advanced HF (in NYHA class III-IV: 61% vs 30.1 %, OR 3.63) and fewer males (57.6% vs 70.5%, OR 0.57) were recruited as outpatients. Common comorbidities were significantly (p <0.05) more Proπireni saaeetak / Extended abstract