This week is dedicated worldwide to raising awareness of heart failure (HF). From Navarra we want to contribute our grain of sand, informing about the relevance of this pathology and above all making known how necessary it is the research in this regard.

HF is a clinical condition characterized by the failure of the heart to supply the rest of the body with the amount of blood necessary for the normal functioning of all its organs. As a result, HF patients have, among other symptoms, shortness of breath (dyspnea), fatigue (asthenia) and swelling in the ankles and legs (edema). As HF progresses, the risk of requiring urgent hospital admissions increases and patients' quality of life deteriorates considerably.

In Spain, more than 3% of the adult population has HF, but this figure will increase in the coming years due to the aging of the population and the increase in the prevalence of diseases that lead to HF, such as chronic kidney disease. HF is the fourth leading cause of death in women and the sixth in men in our country, despite the treatments available today. HF consumes enormous resources of our health care system: it is the leading cause of hospitalization in patients over 65 years of age, accounts for 3% of all hospital admissions, and represents 2.5% of the overall cost of health care in Spain.

A challenge for society

These data indicate that the CI constitutes a real challenge for our society. In view of this challenge, there are three actions to be taken. First, optimize existing health care resources to reduce the incidence of HF and to improve the prognosis and quality of life of HF patients. Second, to investigate the mechanisms that produce heart failure, in order to develop new, more effective and safer treatments. Thirdly, to raise public awareness of the magnitude of the problem and to involve society in the search for solutions.

Reducing the incidence of HF requires the prevention of cardiovascular disease by controlling risk factors. Although notable progress has been made in recent decades in the control of arterial hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and smoking, much remains to be done to control obesity and diabetes, which are increasingly associated with HF. issue Likewise, the development of HF units through the partnership of cardiology and primary care to systematize the diagnosis, treatment and clinical follow-up of patients with HF has been a great advance in the improvement of HF care. programs of study carried out in our country show that patients treated in these units have fewer visits to the emergency department issue and fewer readmissions, greater therapeutic compliance, and even increased survival. In these positive data we must take into account the contribution of the Education programs for patients with HF, which aim to train patients to "self-manage" their disease on a daily basis.

research for the benefit of the patient

The research of HF currently has a priority focus of interest: to accurately differentiate HF patients based on the analysis of multiple aspects related to their disease, but also to their medical biography and lifestyle. The aim is to establish personalized treatments that are more effective and safer for the patients themselves, as well as more sustainable for the healthcare system. In this sense, a consortium has been created at the high school de research Sanitaria de Navarra (idiSNA) that includes professionals from the Clínica Universidad de Navarra, the Navarra Hospital Complex, the research center Médica Aplicada and the University of Navarra, aimed at the genomic characterization of patients with HF who also have chronic kidney disease.

Mortality in HF within 5 years of diagnosis is as high as in most types of cancer, and the presence of HF significantly increases the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease in the elderly. It is crucial that society as a whole accepts the health, social and economic relevance of HF, as it has accepted that of cancer or neurodegenerative diseases.