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The decision to hospitalize or discharge a patient with acute heart failure (HF) is often difficult to make. To develop a prognostic model for acute HF suitable for use in the emergency department (ED), investigators in Ontario, Canada, studied clinical data on 12,591 HF patients treated at 86 hospitals during 2004–2007. Two thirds of the patients were hospitalized; the rest were discharged from the ED. Sixty percent of the patients made up the derivation cohort (mean age, 75.4; 51.5% men), and 40% constituted the validation cohort (mean age, 75.7; 51.6% men). Overall 7-day mortality was 2%. Baseline characteristics were similar in the two cohorts, although creatinine and troponin concentrations and the rate of diuretic use were marginally …