Heart failure: who we treat versus who we study.

The prevalence of patients with the diagnosis of heart failure continues to increase, with recent data suggesting that the current estimate in the United States should now be over 7 million patients. There are many sources of information about the patients with heart failure. Many patients have been enrolled in pharmaceutical and devices trials in heart failure, but the patients enrolled are often not reflective of the patients being managed outside of these trials in terms of age, gender, race, and comorbidities. And yet, investigators have extrapolated the results of these trials to all patients with heart failure. This article offers a comparison of the demographics and outcomes of the patients with heart failure that investigators treat and those studied.