Prof. Đorđe Jakovljević

Abstract

Heart failure (HF) is a global pandemic currently affecting up to 15 million people in Europe. It is a complex clinical syndrome associated with impaired heart function, poor quality of life for patients and high healthcare costs. Accurate early diagnosis of HF allow implementation of evidence-based prevention and treatment strategies which reduce HF morbidity and mortality and its burden on healthcare. Early diagnosis is challenging, often inaccurate as initial signs and symptoms are non-specific. We developed a novel, cardiac output response to stress (CORS) test to facilitate early diagnosis of heart failure which also can be used as a monitoring tool to evaluate disease progression and response to treatment. The CORS, as a novel test for objective evaluation of cardiac function, demonstrates acceptable reproducibility and can potentially be implemented in primary care. In primary care CORS test can be ised to reduce unnecessary referrals to secondary care and has the potential to serve this purpose. Evidence further demonstrated that the CORS is feasible and patients with HF responded differently to non-HF, and HF reduced ejection fraction from HF with preserved ejection fraction. These findings provide further evidence for the potential use of the CORS to improve HF diagnostic and referral accuracy in primary care. As part of an international interdisciplinary STRATIFYHF project, which aims to develop first ever artificial intelligence-based decision support system for risk stratification and early diagnosis of heart failure, the CORS test, along with voice recognition technologies, presents novel technology which will be integrated in the decision support system. The STRATIFYHF will change the ways in which HF is managed today, thereby improving the quality and length of patients’ lives. Our solution will lead towards an efficient and sustainable healthcare systems by reducing the number of HF-related hospital admissions and deaths, and unnecessary referrals from primary to secondary care.