Abstract:
Background: Heart failure is a burgeoning problem worldwide; with more than 20 million
people affected. As developing nations undergo socioeconomic development, the epidemiology
of HF is becoming similar to that of Western Europe and North America, with CAD emerging as
the single most common cause of HF. There are no documented data on the etiology of heart
failure among adult heart failure patients admitted to medical wards in Jimma University
Specialized Hospital.
Objective; The main objective of this study is to assess the cause of heart failure and related risk
factors in adult patients admitted to JUSH medical wards with the diagnosis of heart failure from
July, 8, 2015 to July 7, 2016.
Methods: Institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted on adult patients admitted
with the diagnosis of heart failure to JUSH internal Medicine wards from. July 8, 2015 to July 7,
2016. Systematic random sampling method was used to collect the data from 320 heart failure
patients admitted in internal medicine wards in JUSH. Secondary data were used as data source
and data were collected using a data collection format clinical parameters and investigation
results. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 20.0. Frequency distributions of the sociodemographic characteristics and other variables were portrayed.
Results: One hundred twenty (37.5%) of heart failure patients who were admitted in JUSH are
caused by Ischemic heart disease (IHD),followed by rheumatic heart disease (RHD) accounts 66
(20.6%),Cardiomyopathy 62(19.4%), Hypertensive heart disease (HHD) 30(9.4%)
,corpulmonale 19(5.9%),hypertensive heart disease and ischemic heart disease combined
together 6 (1.9%) and others contribute 17(5.3%). From 320 Heart failure patients 74 (23.1%)
of them are known hypertensive patients, fourteen (4.4%) of HF patients are diabetic and only
29(9.1%) of heart failure patients are smokers.
Conclusion and recommendation: The results of this study indicated that epidemiology of
causes of heart failure has changed from rheumatic heart diseases to ischemic heart diseases
becoming almost similar to western developed countries. Prevention strategies should also focus
to the newly emerging cause of HF
