Objectives: This study investigated the relation between gender, etiology and survival in patients with symptomatic heart failure.
Background: Previous work provides conflicting results concerning the relation between gender, clinical characteristics and survival in patients with heart failure.
Methods: We examined the relation of these factors in 557 patients (380 men, 177 women) who had symptomatic heart failure, predominantly nonischemic in origin (68%) and typically associated with severe left ventricular dysfunction.
Results: Follow-up data were available in 99% of patients (mean follow-up period 2.4 years, range 1 day to 10 years) after study entry, and 201 patients reached the primary study end point of all-cause mortality. By life-table analysis, women were significantly less likely to reach this primary end point than men (p < 0.001). A significant association was found between female gender and better survival (p < 0.001), which depended on the primary etiology of heart failure (p = 0.008 for the gender-etiology interaction) but not on baseline ventricular function. Women survived longer than men when heart failure was due to nonischemic causes (men vs. women: relative risk [RR] 2.36, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.59 to 3.51, p < 0.001). In contrast, outcome appeared similar when heart failure was due to ischemic heart disease (men vs. women: RR 0.85, 95% CI 0.45 to 1.61, p = 0.651).
Conclusions: Women with heart failure due to nonischemic causes had significantly better survival than men with or without coronary disease as their primary cause of heart failure.