Abstract:

Background: Heart failure describes the clinical syndrome that develops when the heart cannot maintain adequate, or can do so only at the expense of elevated ventricular filling pressure. Heart failure is most common in the elderly. The prevalence of heart failure rises from 1% in those aged 50-59 years to over 10% in those aged 80-89 years.

Methods: A cross sectional study using quantitative methods was conducted. A random sampling method was applied to randomly select the patient with heart failure. Interviews were conducted using structured questionnaires. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 20.

Results: The total of 128 of HF patients were involved in this study, in which it included both admitted patients and those in HF clinic, male were 65 (50.8%) and female were 63 (49.2%), risk factors for heart failure involves; hypertension which found to be the most common risk factor which took 91.4% of the total population, followed by smoking which took 32%, AIDS take 18% while DM takes 15.6% physical inactivity 14.1%.

Conclusion: The study shows the most common risk factors for heart failure at Bugando are hypertension, smoking, DM, HIV/AIDS and physical inactivity. Proper management of the risk factors will reduce the burden and mortality of people with heart failure. People who at high risk of having heart should be monitored with frequent hospital visit to assess occurrence of the disease for early intervention. Also the government should support community involvement of prevention of heart disease. This involves allocation of funds, drugs and medical personnel for training of the community on prevention of the disease. This is through avoiding and proper management of the risk factors.