Methods
Design and execution of the SELFIE-TR registry has been published before
[17]. To summarize, 23 study centres representing all geographic
areas in Turkey were included in the SELFIE-TR study. The diagnosis of
HF was established using a combination of clinical evaluation,
echocardiographic and laboratory findings, and the diagnosis was
independently confirmed by at least two cardiologists working at each
individual study centre. All patients who were 18 years old or older and
accepted enrolment to the study were included; no exclusion criteria
were used. A total of 1054 patients were enrolled, and one-year survival
data became recently available for 1022 out of these 1054 patients
[18]. Of these patients, 748 had complete data to calculate
ACEF-MDRD score, and all analyses were done using these records.
All patients who were included to the SELFIE-TR registry gave their
informed consent before inclusion and present study was conducted
according to the principles outlined in 1975 Declaration of Helsinki and
its revisions. The study was approved by an ethics committee (approval
no 288-AU/003) and a regulatory approval was obtained in each study
centre per laws and other regulations.
All laboratory measurements were done at the individual centres and
samples used for analyses were withdrawn soon after the inclusion of the
patient to the study. Not all measurements were available for all
patients due to the differences between the centres in terms of local
resources. Ejection fraction was measured with two-dimensional
echocardiography in each study centre by two cardiologists blinded to
each other’s measurement, and an average of these two measurements were
taken as the final result.