Holistic intervention for patients with heart failure and frailty
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A holistic patient-centred intervention to improve outcomes of older people living with frailty and chronic heart failure
IRAS ID
308915
Contact name
Shirley Sze
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leicester
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) is a medical condition in which the heart is unable to pump sufficiently to maintain blood flow to meet the body's needs. CHF is common in older people and has a poor prognosis. Most patients with CHF require repeat prolonged hospital admissions as the disease progresses. This adversely impacts on patients’ Quality of Life (QoL) and is costly to the NHS.
Frailty is a complex syndrome due to deterioration in multiple body systems. It is characterised by reduction in physical strength, frequent falls and malnutrition. Over the past few years, our team has conducted several studies to understand the problem of frailty in patients with CHF. We found that frailty is extremely common in older CHF patients, and underpins recurrent hospital admissions and death; yet it is often under-recognised. Furthermore, older patients with frailty are often excluded from clinical trials for HF, so it is unclear how we should manage these patients.
Current HF care focuses on medical management; many non-medical issues are neglected.
Moreover, our existing HF rehabilitation programme is not individualised and only emphasises on an exercise component. In order to address the various care needs of CHF patients living with frailty, including physical function, medication, dietary, psychological and social needs, we aim to design a novel intervention adopting a patient-centred approach and involves different healthcare workers. The intervention will include an individualised exercise training programme designed by
physiotherapists/rehabilitation specialists; nutritional support from dieticians,
regular medication review by specialist nurses/pharmacists and co-management of
comorbidities involving relevant specialists. Through the intervention, we aim to improve participants’ physical function, QoL and reduce hospital admissions. On a wider level, we aim to create a reproducible frailty intervention, which can be adopted by HF teams across the country to improve care and outcomes of CHF patients.REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/EM/0172
Date of REC Opinion
19 Aug 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion