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During the past decade, we have witnessed substantial shortening in hospital length of stay for patients with heart failure. Although better medical therapy and new cardiac devices have resulted in improved long-term outcomes in these patients, whether shorter length of stay puts patients at risk for short-term adverse events is unclear.
Researchers performed a retrospective observational study on data from almost 7 million fee-for-service Medicare patients (age, ≥65) who were hospitalized with heart failure from 1993 to 2006. During the study, mean length of stay decreased by 2.5 days (from 8.8 days in 1993 to 6.3 days in 2006), and in-hospital and 30-day mortality rates decreased from 8.5% to 4.3% and from 12.8% to 10.7%, respectively. Dis…