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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2023 Jul 9.
Published in final edited form as: J Am Coll Cardiol. 2022 Jul 12;80(2):111–122. doi: 10.1016/j.jacc.2022.04.045

CENTRAL ILLUSTRATION. Overall Number and Temporal Trends in Worsening Heart Failure Events.

CENTRAL ILLUSTRATION

Qualifying clinical encounters included all hospitalizations, emergency department visits including observation stays, and outpatient encounters with a diagnosis code for heart failure (HF). Episodes of worsening HF were defined as including ≥1 qualifying clinical encounter, ≥1 symptom, ≥2 objecting findings including ≥1 sign, and ≥1 change in HF-related therapy. In total, there were 1,223,616 unique clinical encounters with an associated diagnosis code for HF. After applying natural language processing-based algorithms, the proportion of clinical encounters meeting the diagnostic criteria for worsening HF ranged from a low of 4.7% for outpatient encounters to a high of 37.2% for hospitalizations (A). There has been a substantial increase in the annual incidence of episodes of worsening HF from 25 to 33 events per 100 person-years driven by emergency department visits and outpatient encounters (B).