Loading...
Little information is available to guide the decision whether or not an emergency department (ED) patient with acute heart failure should be admitted to hospital, managed in a short-stay observation unit, or discharged home. To derive and validate a model for predicting 7-day mortality, researchers used data from a random sample of patients with heart failure who were discharged from or admitted to the ED in Ontario, Canada, from 2004 to 2007. Patients were excluded if they had do-not-resuscitate orders, were receiving palliative care, or were dialysis dependent. The derivation cohort comprised 7500 patients and the validation cohort comprised 5000 patients; in both cohorts, two thirds of patients were hospitalized and one third were discha…