Hospital Readmission for Heart Failure in a Teaching Hospital in the State of São Paulo-SP

Abstract

Retrospective descriptive study of patients readmitted for chronic heart failure, aiming to quantify the rates of unplanned hospital readmission within 30 days and factors possibly associated with readmission. Hospital readmission rates in 2010 and 2011 were 3.91% and 2.41%, respectively, the average time until readmission being 14.5±7.1 days. The most frequent heart failure etiology was valve disease, followed by hypertension. Most were women and 96% were readmitted as a result of the persistence or recurrence of the episode that prompted the initial admission. No satisfactory data regarding the possible causes of persistence or recurrence of the disease were found.