Heart Failure (HF) is a complex set of conditions that results in the heart performing less well than it did – it is no longer pumping blood as well as it would in perfect health. HF affects around 1 million patients in the UK, and accounts for 2% of NHS direct costs. HF also disproportionally affects socioeconomically deprived groups, and is associated with a high rate of hospitalisation and mortality.
Emerging evidence suggests that many of the risk factors of HF are similar to those of poor outcomes in COVID-19 patients. Also, reductions in hospital activity in dealing with cardiovascular diseases during the pandemic are likely to worsen HF patient outcomes. It is therefore important to take a closer look at HF patients and study the effects of COVID-19 and vaccines in different HF subtypes using large-scale, representative data.
The CVD-COVID-UK programme links various large health data sources from across the UK. Looking at this combined data will provide reliable evidence about the risk of COVID-19 complications and the efficacy of vaccines in groups of people with different subtypes of HF.
Given the high number of people living with HF (around 1 million) and its huge impact on quality of life, the proposed analysis will provide directly useful evidence to inform clinical decision making and vaccination efforts for HF patients.
View this project on the Health Data Research Gateway
Sub-projects
CCU032_01: Exploring the temporal trends and patterns of the incidence of HF and its associated comorbidities, as well as subsequent hospitalisation and mortality before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and describing these patterns according to HF subtype.
CCU032_02: Investigating clinical outcomes following COVID-19 infection in prevalent HF cases across different subtypes compared to a non-HF control cohort. The outcomes of interest include, hospitalisation, all-cause and cause-specific mortality, COVID-19 severity (e.g. A&E admission, ICU ventilator), long COVID (subject to availability) and death.
[Investigating the direct effects of COVID-19 infection on individuals with prevalent HF.]