This research should help to identify ways of improving the outlook for people with newly diagnosed heart failure. The analysis of the data generated by this study will be supervised by a statistician. Clinical and demographic data will be described using mean + standard deviation, for continuous variables, and absolute numbers and percentages for categorical variables. Group differences will be examined by t-tests for continuous variables and Chi-square (x2) test for categorical variables. Survival will be reported in terms of Kaplan-Meier curves with differences analysed by Cox proportional hazards.