Heart failure and multimorbidity in Australian general practice

BACKGROUND: Heart failure (HF) is a serious condition that mostly affects older people. Despite the ageing population experiencing an increased prevalence of many chronic conditions, current guidelines focus on isolated management of HF. OBJECTIVE: To describe the burden of multimorbidity in patients with HF being managed in general practice in Australia. DESIGN: Data from the Bettering the Evaluation And Care of Health (BEACH) programme were used to determine (i) the prevalence of HF, (ii) the number of co-existing long-term conditions, and (iii) the most common disease combinations in patients with HF. The study was undertaken over fifteen, 5-week recording periods between November 2012 and March 2016. RESULTS: The dataset included a total of 25,790 general practitioner (GP) encounters with patients aged ≥45 years, collected by 1,445 GPs. HF had been diagnosed in 1,119 of these patients, a prevalence of 4.34% (95% confidence interval [CI] 3.99–4.68) among patients at GP encounters, and 2.08% (95% CI 1.87–2.29) when applied to the general Australian population overall. HF rarely occurred in isolation, with 99.1% of patients having at least one and 53.4% having six or more other chronic illnesses. The most common pair of comorbidities among active patients with HF was hypertension and osteoarthritis (43.4%). CONCLUSION: Overall, one in every 20–25 GP encounters with patients aged ≥45 years in Australia is with a patient with HF. Multimorbidity is a typical presentation among this patient group and guidelines for general practice must take this into account.