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Comment & Response
July 31, 2024

Heart Failure—Together We Go Farther—Reply

Author Affiliations
  • 1Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles
  • 2Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, University of California, Los Angeles
  • 3Associate Editor for Health Care Quality and Guidelines, JAMA Cardiology
JAMA Cardiol. 2024;9(10):948-949. doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2024.2184

In Reply We thank Van der Linden and Mullens for their interest in our recent Review article1 on quality improvement interventions for optimization of guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT). We agree that interdisciplinary efforts with nurses and pharmacists are often a key component to successful interventions in both the inpatient and outpatient setting. Regarding country-level differences, we found most interventions were conducted in the US with several others performed in high-income countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Australia. This raises an interesting point regarding global disparities in GDMT use and how interventions may differ both in terms of implementation and effectiveness across various settings. One observational study2 in the country of Georgia reported that the development of a new heart failure management program that incorporated both local clinician and patient education was extremely efficacious, resulting in a roughly 5- to-10-fold increase in the prescription of β-blockers and renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system inhibitors. Notably, baseline rates of prescriptions were low at 7.4% and 18.4%, respectively. This example highlights substantial variation in the efficacy of certain interventions depending on the setting in which they are performed, as well as the potential for significant impact in regions with low levels of baseline GDMT use.

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