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All laboratory measurements were done at the individual centres and samples used for analyses were withdrawn soon after the inclusion of the patient to the study.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.