Grant: Project Grant - Priority Announcement: Patient-Oriented Research

Heart Failure (HF) is very common. Many people die or are disabled by it and it worsens their quality of life. Depression, sleep apnea (problems breathing at night referred to as OSA) and cognitive impairment (memory, thinking problems) are very common in people with HF. We call these "DOC" conditions for short. Finding out if people with HF have DOC conditions may help them improve their quality of life. It can also help them better control their HF symptoms. For example, someone with cognitive difficulties might need different instructions about when to take or change their HF medicines to make it easier for them to manage their HF. Regular testing for these conditions is complicated and time-consuming, so doctors can't test all HF patients for them. A fast way to know if people have any DOC conditions is needed. This study will test how well a short screening test, that's been studied in stroke patients (and shown to work well), can work to screen for DOC conditions in people with HF. The first goal is to see if screening can be done quickly and easily in HF clinics. The second is to see if the screen scores reliably predict the actual conditions. To do this, we are going to screen people in HF clinics and ask them to volunteer for more detailed testing. We'll compare the screening to the detailed testing to see how well it predicts them. If the screening works well, it can help people with HF improve their quality of life by treating DOC conditions. It may also allow us to study new ways of improving HF treatment; for example, by giving more personalized treatment instructions to those with depression or memory problems. The heart and the brain are very closely connected - each affects the other. We hope we can use this approach to improve both the hearts and minds of many of the 600,000 people living with HF in Canada and in doing so, help them to live longer, healthier lives.