Tag Archives: interpretation

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