For 40-year-old men with blood pressure less than 140/90 mm Hg, lifetime risk for CHF was 14.8 percent, while men with blood pressure of 160/100 mm Hg or greater had a risk of 27.9 percent.
Researchers have established lifetime risks for other diseases, such as breast cancer. However, it's been hard to pinpoint a true lifetime risk for congestive heart failure.
The most common symptoms of CHF, including shortness of breath and swollen ankles, are associated with many diseases. As a result, studying lifetime risk in the general population requires researchers to "tease out" true congestive heart failure from other conditions, Lloyd-Jones says. "Framingham is a unique population where it is much easier to determine with confidence which people have congestive heart failure," he says.
The researchers followed more than 8,000 men and women for up to 25 years. The participants had no history of congestive heart failure at the start of the study, but 583 developed it during the study.
The researchers wanted to better understand the lifetime risk of developing CHF because hospitalizations for it have increased significantly in the last two decades, Lloyd-Jones says. "In fact, CHF is now the leading cause of hospitalization for people over age 65."
Lloyd-Jones says knowing lifetime risk is important because it helps show a disease's or syndrome's impact on a population. Often, lifetime risk numbers help to draw attention to a condition and motivate people to change their behaviors or to see their doctors to determine their risk of diseases.
"These numbers are a clear message to doctors and patients that they should focus on lifestyle changes that can reduce risk for high blood pressur
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Contact: Carole Bullock
carole.bullock@heart.org
214-706-1279
American Heart Association
4-Nov-2002