After being hospitalized with heart failure for the first time, 25 percent of patients did not return to work one year after hospitalization, according to a new study presented on Sunday at Heart Failure 2016 and the 3rd World Congress on Acute Heart Failure in Florence, Italy.
For the study, researchers examined data obtained from nationwide registries in Denmark on 11,880 first-time heart failure patients between 18 and 60 years of age. A year after being hospitalized, 25 percent had not returned to work, 68 percent had and 7 percent had died. Younger patients, between the ages of 18 to 30, were more than three times more likely to return to work than patients between 51 and 60 years of age. Patients with higher education were twice as likely to return to work as their study counterparts with more rudimentary levels of education.
The study's presenter, Rasmus Roerth, a physician at Copenhagen University Hospital, concluded, "Removal from the labor market and dependence on public benefits has great economic consequences which go beyond the already significant financial burden that these patients place on the healthcare system. More knowledge on what stops patients going back to work will put us in a better position to find ways of preventing it, for example with more intensive rehabilitation, psychological support, or education."
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