Grant: Operating Grant

Heart failure remains one of the most common, disabling, expensive and fatal medical conditions worldwide. In Canada, it is present in about 1/100 to 2/100 Canadians, and despite important improvements with medications, the number of deaths from heart failure continues to be high. Given that heart failure is a condition resulting in water and salt retention, it is generally thought that reducing dietary salt would help patients. Importantly, one of every 5 emergency room visits of patients with heart failure is linked to extra salt in the diet. This study is conducted to find out if a low sodium diet (1500 mg/day sodium), compared with a moderate sodium diet (2300 mg/day sodium), reduces the chance that patients with heart failure will be admitted to the hospital, need to go to the emergency department, or live longer. This is a clinical trial. This research will take place in 15 centers across Canada and will involved 1000 patients. Patients are expected to attend clinical visits over a period of 12 months to help them achieve and stay at the correct amount of salt in the diet. Prior studies have tested if a lower salt diet improves how people feel or if they were hospitalized for heart failure. However, these trials were small and had short follow-up and so are unable to provide enough information to change practice and recommend to all patients with heart failure. Our trial is large enough to see if this will be good for most patients, and long enough to see if this makes a difference in clinical outcomes such needing to be hospitalized, visit the emergency department or die.