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Ottawa Heart Failure Risk Scale could save lives and reduce adverse events


March 16, 2017

More than one million people come to Canadian and U.S. emergency departments each year with acute heart failure. Many of these people will experience a serious adverse event, such as death, within a few months.

Dr. Ian Stiell and his colleagues developed the Ottawa Heart Failure Risk Scale to help emergency physicians determine which patients should be admitted to hospital and which can be safely discharged. The tool assigns each patient a score based on things like blood tests, heart rate and disease history.

A new study of 1,100 patients across Canada found that using the tool would decrease the rate of serious adverse events such as death from 16 percent to 11 percent. It would also allow 22 percent of patients to be treated safely at home or in the community.

See Academic Emergency Medicine and SGEM blog. The paper reached #10 on the journal’s all-time list for media and social media attention.

Authors: Ian G. Stiell, Jeffrey J. Perry, Catherine M. Clement, Robert J. Brison, Brian H. Rowe, Shawn D. Aaron, Andrew D. McRae, Bjug Borgundvaag, Lisa A. Calder, Alan J. Forster, George A. Wells.

Funders: Canadian Institutes of Health Research, University of Ottawa, The Ottawa Hospital Foundation, Canada Research Chairs Program

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Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
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