Measuring health-related quality of life in heart disease in the US
Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA – A single questionnaire is now available for clinicians and researchers interested in assessing patient health-related quality of life in patients with angina, myocardial infarction, or heart failure.
Our objective was to determine whether the MacNew health-related quality of life questionnaire, originally developed and validated in English-speaking patients with myocardial infarction, could also be used in patients with angina or heart failure.
The data demonstrated that the MacNew is a reliable and valid questionnaire for measuring physical, emotional, and social aspects of health-related quality of life in patients with angina or heart failure.
Core specific quality of life questionnaires have a long tradition in cancer but not in heart disease research. A core heart-specific questionnaire would provide a better understanding of the range in health-related quality of life. This will potentially optimize clinical service provision as well as clinical medicine and social science outcome research efforts when making quality of life outcome comparisons across patients with angina, MI, or heart failure.
Says Dr. Höfer, “While there are a number of different health-related quality of life questionnaires, a single instrument applicable to patients with the three major heart disease diagnoses was lacking. We applied and tested the MacNew health-releated quality of life questionnaire in over 400 US and Canadian patients with angina and heart failure, demonstrating its potential as a single questionnaire for assessing health-related quality of life in patients with angina, myocardial infarction, or heart failure”.
Value in Health, 2012, Volume 15, Issue 1, Pages 143-150
In practice, this kind of shared measurement approach can also support longitudinal tracking, allowing clinicians to compare changes after medication adjustments, rehabilitation, or surgery using the same framework. It may help identify subtle differences between symptom burden and functional limitation that are not obvious in routine visits, especially when patients report fluctuating fatigue or emotional distress. Researchers can pair these results with digital tools and remote monitoring platforms to improve follow-up between appointments. Similar data-driven methods are increasingly used in other fields as well, including forecasting and decision support systems such as https://aipredon.com and https://bettorixsports.com, where structured inputs are analyzed to estimate likely outcomes and trends.