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Pharmacy Clinical Pearl of the Day: Heart Failure Disease Definition of Severity
Its important for the patients with heart failure to know how much their ejection fraction is.
Clinical Pearl of the Day: Heart Failure disease definition of severity
Ejection fraction (EF) refers to how well your heart—mainly left ventricle or right ventricle—pumps blood with each heartbeat.
Definitions of severity:
- Preserved EF is 50%
- Mildly reduced is EF 40%-49% (also called midrange i.e. HFmrEF)
- Moderately reduced is EF 30%-39%
- Severely reduced is EF ˂ 30%
- Heart failure improved EF (HFimpEF)
- Baseline LVEF of 40% or less, with increase of at least 10 points from baseline LVEF and a second measurement of LVEF of greater than 40%
Explanation:
- Its important for the patients with heart failure to know how much their EF is, and for health care providers to measure the EF for these patients on regular basis.
- EF can be measured with imaging tests, such as echocardiogram.