Abstract 17696: Heart Failure Symptoms and Self-Care Management Over Time: One Hand Washing the Other

Background: Both heart failure (HF) symptoms and self-care management (i.e. patient responses to symptom when they occur) are associated with important patient outcomes. Although it is thought symptoms drive self-management, results of studies examining these relationships are inconsistent and primarily of cross-sectional designs. Hypothesis: Symptom severity would be significantly associated with changes in HF self-care management over 6 months. Method: Latent mixture analysis was used to identify natural-occurring sub-groups based on physical symptoms of dyspnea, sleepiness, and edema (HF Somatic Perception Scale - dyspnea and edema subscales; Epworth Sleepiness Scale). Latent growth modeling was then used to determine how self-care management behaviors (Self-care of HF Index - self-care management score) over 6 months differed by symptom sub-group. Socio-demographic and clinical variables predicting likelihood of sub-group membership were identified using multivariate logistic regression. Results: The ...