Introduction
Heart failure (HF) is a complex, heterogeneous, and increasingly prevalent cardiovascular disorder.Even when patients with HF are treated by expert clinicians and prescribed evidence-based therapies, they are responsible for the majority of their own care.Consistent and effective self-care is essential to the overall management of the life-limiting condition of HF.Effective tailoring of interventions to improve health outcomes is impeded, however, by the lack of understanding of how HF self-care changes over time and how self-care may influence patient-reported outcomes like health-related quality of life (HRQOL).
Self-care of HF involves two related behaviors. First, patients with HF engage in routine self-care maintenance behaviors, such as taking prescribed medications, maintaining fluid volume by limiting dietary sodium intake, participating in health seeking behaviors, and monitoring for common HF symptoms.Second, patients with HF engage in self-care management, which involves recognizing HF symptoms, engaging in various strategies to ameliorate symptoms, such as reducing fluid and sodium intake or taking an extra diuretic, and judging the effectiveness of treatment strategies.Self-care management, the focus of this research, is a key link between HF pathogenesis and healthcare utilization and other health outcomes.Yet, very little is known about HF self-care management behaviors, particularly how they may change over time.
Patients with HF experience considerable variability in HF symptoms to which they must respond.It can be difficult for patients to recognize HF symptoms,and patients vary considerably in self-care management behaviors.But, there is a paucity of longitudinal research on HF self-care management behaviors. Given the inherent heterogeneity of HF, methods of identifying distinct patterns of change over time (i.e. trajectories) have given rise to new insights in clinical research. For example, Riegel and colleagues identified two distinct trajectories of change in objectively-measured HF medication adherence over time (consistently high and a steep decline).Creber and colleagues also recently reported observing two common and distinct trajectories of dietary adherence in HF (adherent and non-adherent).The care of patients with HF could be improved with a better understanding of the unique ways in which self-care management changes over time, and how these patterns relate to patient-oriented outcomes like HRQOL.
Accordingly, the primary aim of this study was to identify naturally-occurring patterns of self-care management over the course of six months among adults with symptomatic HF. We hypothesized that a) multiple trajectories of HF self-care management behaviors could be identified and would be associated with differences in HRQOL, and b) determinants of HF self-care management trajectories would include multiple socio-demographic and clinical factors.