Heart failure is no longer defined by a single number

Cardiovascular guidance moves fast, and in August the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, European Society of Cardiology and World Heart Federation published the Second Universal Definition of Heart Failure, the first update since 2021.

Lifeyear’s Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer, Dr Eleanor Wicks, was invited to co-author the accompanying perspective in Circulation with Dr Shanti Velmurugan of Barts Health NHS Trust, setting out what the new definition means for clinicians managing heart failure day to day.

The update replaces rigid ejection-fraction cut-offs with three clinically actionable groups (reduced, preserved and improved), introduces seventeen cause-based categories to sharpen diagnosis, and gives clearer language for how patients change over time, from improvement to remission to full recovery. Running through all of it is a stronger emphasis on prevention: finding cardiovascular risk well before a first hospital admission.

As Dr Wicks notes, the definition’s focus on continuity, following patients dynamically as their condition changes, reflects exactly the kind of care Lifeyear is built to support: helping specialist teams see what is happening between appointments and act on it.

Read Dr Wicks’ full perspective on LinkedIn, or the original paper in Circulation.