Heart Failure and Heart Valve Disease | How to Diagnose Heart Failure and Key Issues in an Echo Report

Introduction
Welcome to this session on how to diagnose heart failure (HF) and key issues in an echo report.

This session aims to help build confidence in identifying patients who may have HF, as well as in taking a relevant history and in carrying out an examination.

It will explain how to choose the appropriate investigations (especially BNP and NT-proBNP), how to refer for echocardiography if needed, and how to recognise the salient features of the echo report.

This will facilitate a thorough review of a general practice HF register, to ensure all patients have the appropriate diagnostic codes applied.

Session aims
Heart failure is a complex clinical syndrome in which the functional ability of the heart is impaired. Symptoms of HF are often vague and nonspecific. Early detection is important as there are many disease-modifying medications that can improve symptoms, slow or halt the progression of disease, reduce hospital admissions and improve survival.

This session aims to help clinicians in the early detection and diagnosis of HF.

We hope that after completion of the session, clinicians will have a strong understanding of which patients to suspect HF in, which clinical symptoms suggest HF, and who to refer for further investigations.

This session also describes how to best use common tests including echocardiography and the basics of interpretation of an echocardiogram report.

At the end of this session you will know how to:

• describe the type of patient in whom to suspect heart failure
• discuss features of the history which make heart failure less likely
• list the common symptoms, signs and investigations for heart failure
• identify when to use and how to interpret BNP and NT-proBNP
• categorise common findings on an echo report into important (need action) and supplementary (no action needed)
• determine what actions to take after receiving an echo report
• apply appropriate clinical codes to patient’s medical record