HCMC hospital meets int'l standard in treating heart failure

The AHA granted the hospital in Binh Thanh District the Bronze Plus Quality Award on Wednesday, saying it recognizes the hospital for "its continued success in using the "Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure" program.

"Thank you, for applying the most up-to-date evident-based treatment guidelines to improve patient care and outcomes in the community you serve," read the certificate, which will expire on Oct. 31, 2023.

Nguyen Hoang Hai, director of Gia Dinh People's Hospital, said Wednesday it had established a heart failure treatment unit in 2020 with the aim of having patients with heart disease access treatment as soon as possible.

To develop the unit, the hospital participated in the "Get With the Guidelines" program by the AHA, a nonprofit organization in the U.S. that funds cardiovascular medical research, educates consumers on healthy living and fosters appropriate cardiac care in an effort to reduce disability and deaths caused by cardiovascular disease and stroke.

As recommended by the association in 2017, the dose of heart failure medications is increased sequentially over the time.

In 2021, it recommended using drugs on the principle of early combination, increase the dose early and quickly, which helps increase patient vitality. It also requires doctors to combine different solutions and closely monitor the patient through regularly arranging follow-up examinations.

The AHA standard treatment regimen initially helps patients with heart failure reduce symptoms, reduce the rate of re-hospitalization, thereby reducing the mortality rate.

Once joining the "Get With the Guidelines" program, a hospital will get bronze recognition if it could demonstrate that its performance is more than 85% effective on patients over 90 consecutive days.

Silver recognizes performance over 12 consecutive months while gold recognizes performance over 24 consecutive months or more.

Dr. Hai said heart failure is the final consequence in a chain of cardiovascular diseases. Common diseases like hypertension, diabetes or complex diseases like myocardial infarction all lead to heart failure.

He said Vietnam has no statistics on heart failure, but with the increased aging of the population and the growing number of elderly people with chronic diseases, the incidence of heart failure may increase over time.

The death rate from heart failure in the first year is 15-20% of patients and after, four to five years, and could rise up to 50%.