What are the financial and emotional impacts of heart failure on patients, their families, and carers?
The financial costs of heart failure to the patient and family arise from prescription charges (in patients under the age of 60), attendance at GP surgeries and outpatient clinics, hospital stays, modifications to the home and loss of earnings due to absence from work or loss of employment thus leading to adverse pressures on the family. Quality of life is affected by the physical limitations imposed by the condition, the social limitations that follow from this and the emotional problems that may also arise. These symptoms can be caused by the disease itself, by co-morbidities, or can result from the side effects of treatment.