The National Health Insurance awareness campaign for the recognition of heart failure is relaunched from this March 13 in order to promote to seniors the good reflexes to adopt.
- Health Insurance is relaunching, from March 13, its national awareness campaign on heart failure.
- When the first campaign was launched in September 2022, specialists lamented that too many people still think that heart failure is not a serious illness.
- This new campaign is also focused on solutions to improve the patient’s quality of life.
Heart failure affects 1.5 million French people, a number that could increase by 25% every four years. It now affects 10% of people over 70, but its incidence is also tending to increase among people under 55, due to unhealthy lifestyle habits such as smoking, lack of physical activity or poor diet. However, there could be an underestimation of the figures due to a delay in diagnosis in many patients, which would be due to a lack of knowledge of the main symptoms of the pathology.
Global knowledge of heart failure is growing
In order to better inform the general public, Health Insurance is relaunching, from March 13, its national awareness campaign called “And if your heart tried to tell you something?”. Started in September 2022, this campaign had three missions: raise awareness of symptoms, improve and anticipate care and promote diagnosis. “Thanks to the first wave of the campaign, overall knowledge of heart failure is on the rise, with 13% of seniors spontaneously citing it as one of the heart diseases they know (+3% compared to June 2022 )”can we read in a press release from health insurance.
The campaign focused on the four main signs of the disease found in the acronym EPOF (shortness of breath, weight gain, edema and fatigue), in order to direct patients with doubts to a doctor. Objective rather successful: nearly 9 out of 10 seniors now identify fatigue as a symptom (88%, +6 points) as well as unusual shortness of breath (87%, +4 points). 7 out of 10 seniors cite edema (70%, +8 points) and 37% of seniors mention rapid weight gain (+11 points). 9 out of 10 seniors also said the campaign encouraged them to see their doctor when symptoms first appeared.
Symptoms: it is sometimes necessary to insist with your doctor
The Health Insurance specifies that in the event of symptoms, even slight ones, it is necessary to know how to insist with his general practitioner on the unusual nature of the symptoms felt, because if they are often minimal at the beginning, they settle gradually and can be trivialized. These symptoms can sometimes be ignored in younger patients even though heart failure does not only affect older people.
When the campaign was launched, experts lamented that too many people still believe that heart failure is not a serious condition. “When a person announces their cancer, the emotion is immediate. It’s not the same when someone announces that they have heart failure”said Professor Christophe Leclercq, president of the French Society of Cardiology, head of the cardiology and vascular diseases department.
49% of seniors still believe heart failure is curable
Another 40% of respondents only know heart failure by name and 49% continue to believe it is curable, although it is in fact incurable and requires lifelong treatment. Some continue to minimize its consequences on daily life, even if this figure has been falling since June 2022. On the other hand, respondents remain well aware that heart failure can lead to hospitalizations (83%) and death (87%).
Fortunately, the patient’s quality of life can be improved if the care is good and if the patient makes positive changes in his lifestyle, such as adopting a better diet, lower in salt (but not too much), or regular physical activity. Points that Health Insurance emphasizes in this new campaign.
