Inpatient Monitoring of Decompensated Heart Failure: What Is Needed?

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Acute decompensated heart failure is a serious and common condition where close monitoring of symptoms, vital signs, haemodynamic and other markers are needed after the patient is admitted to hospital as the in-hospital outcome is poor. This review focuses on advances in the assessment and monitoring of these patients. RECENT FINDINGS: The adoption of the CHAMP acronym to identify precipitating factors and of the classification using wet-warm, wet-cold, dry-warm and dry-cold categories is an improvement regarding assessment. SUMMARY: Although the outcome of acute decompensated heart failure has remained poor with no new treatments found for a number of years, a structured approach to assessment and monitoring is now available.