Tag Archives: heart rate control

Optimised beta blocker therapy in heart failure: is there space for additional heart rate control? Dear Sirs, We undertook a similar audit to Russell et al.1 within the heart failure service of a district general hospital auditing the case notes of 96 patients attending over three months. Applying the SHIFT inclusion and exclusion criteria, we identified only seven patients (6.7%) eligible for ivabradine. Using the SHIFT dataset the number needed to treat to prevent a single hospitalisation due to heart failure was 22.2 Extrapolating our data, over 12 months, we would expect to identify approximately 28 suitable patients. Treating 28 patients

We audited management of AF at the Royal Surrey County Hospital against standards derived from the NICE guidelines. Fifty-nine of the 663 patients (8.9%) presenting to the acute medical take during the month of May 2008 had a documented diagnosis of AF, 10% of whom presented with a new diagnosis of AF and 90% of whom had a pre-existing diagnosis. The case notes of these 59 patients were reviewed. All patients with a new diagnosis of AF were managed consistently with the NICE guidelines. Compliance for patients with pre-existing AF was much lower. Eighteen out of 31 patients (58%) with pre-existing AF were found to be on digoxin monotherapy on