ACC HFpEF Guidance: What to Know

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hello. I'm Ileana Piña. I'm the quality officer for cardiovascular line at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and this is my blog.

I really wanted to do this blog because there are two papers that I want to talk to you about. I am really impressed at how well written they are and how well structured they are. They both have to do with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF).

You have heard me talk about the growing number of patients with HFpEF. Yet, it is a difficult diagnosis. It's much easier to diagnose HF with reduced EF (HFrEF) because the EF is abnormal and the patient usually has a history, whether it's hypertension or myocardial infarction. This is different, and I think most of these patients are probably sitting in the primary care office.

In the primary care office, they may look like patients with diabetes. They may look like patients with obesity, thinking that they're short of breath because of their obesity. They may be looked at as the hypertensive variety. Yet, it's never brought out that this is really HFpEF.

American College of Cardiology (ACC) Expert Consensus Decision Pathway

This paperis actually a consensus document by experts explaining why we are seeing more of this, how to diagnose it, and what things mimic HFpEF but are not, in fact, HFpEF and may have other causation.