Self-Awareness of Symptoms, Signs and Medical Compliance Using a Patient Diary in Heart Failure Management (AWARE-HF)

Before a HF patient gets maximally decompensated and visit emergency department, most patients experience symptoms and signs of "on-going decompensation (or pre-decompensation)", which may not be noticed by the patients. If HF patients were aware of symptoms and signs of ADHF and received early intervention to stop the process of "on-going decompensation (or pre-decompensation)", it would be possible to reduce the rate of hospitalization for ADHF or death. Thus, self-awareness and self-examination of heart failure symptoms, signs and medical compliance using a patient diary in HF management may improve the outcomes in chronic stable HF patients. A patient diary with 6 parameters can serve this purpose: body weight, blood pressure, heart rate, drug compliance expressed as number of remaining pills of previous day, edema grade, and dyspnea grade.