Heart Failure Life Expectancy Calculator
The heart failure life expectancy calculator is a simple, yet effective, tool for predicting the 1-year and 3-year survival odds of someone with congestive heart failure.
In the article below, we will focus on congestive heart failure/CHF prognosis, the estimates on how long can you live with congestive heart failure, and the average CHF life expectancy for a given stage of the disease.
How to use the congestive heart failure life expectancy calculator?
To find a person's survival odds with our heart failure life expectancy calculator, you'll need the exact values of:
- The age of the patient;
- The patient's weight/height, or BMI (given in kg/m²);
- Their creatinine levels - creatinine is a product of the muscles' metabolism. It is found at increased levels when the kidneys do not work properly;
- Ejection Fraction (EF) - the amount of blood that is pushed out of the heart during systole, out of the total amount of blood in the heart; and
- Systolic blood pressure - the larger value of the blood pressure measurement made during a routine blood pressure check-up, given in mmHg.
In addition, you need to answer the following questions:
- What's your patient's sex?
- Does your patient take angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors (ACEi), for example, captopril, or angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARB, sartans)?
- Does your patient take beta-blockers, for example, propranolol, metoprolol, bisoprolol?
- Was your patients heart failure diagnosed ≥ 18 months ago?
- What's your patient's NYHA class?
- Does your patient suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)?
- Does your patient still smoke? Or have they managed to quit?
- Does your patient suffer from diabetes?
How long will I live with heart failure?
The congestive heart failure lifespan depends on many variables, such as the cause of heart failure, its severity, and other comorbidities.
The survival rates for those affected in the general population are:
- 1-year: 81.3%;
- 5-years: 51.5%; and
- 10-years: 29.5%.
There are 6 million people alive in the US that suffer from this disease, and almost 1 million in the UK. The data shown above tells us that only a half of these people will survive the next 5 years.
❤️ A heart transplant, being the ultimate treatment for such a disease, prolongs the estimated survival. 20 years after a transplant, around 21% of patients are still alive. (Some hospitals report the survival rate of even 50% during that time!)
There's a special tool for assessing the mortality rate of heart failure patients admitted to the ICU.
Congestive heart failure prognosis and progression stages
The ACC/AHA Guidelines specify four stages of HF, indirectly determining how long can a person live with congestive heart failure, depending on the given phase of the disease.
| Stage | Description | Examples |
| A | Patients at risk of developing HF | Hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, in general: their cardiovascular risk |
| B | Patients with anatomical changes and no symptoms | Heart attack, valves, atria or ventricles changes |
| C | Patients with anatomical changes and the presence of symptoms | Tiredness, shortness of breath, treatment due to the presence of symptoms |
| D | Advanced disease, require special medical attention | Hospitalized patients, patients awaiting heart transplant, patients with mechanical device supporting heart function |
Progressing through the above stages is exaggerated by:
- Lack of treatment;
- Heart events, such as the heart attack;
- Improper diet;
- Age; and
- General health (units of alcohol consumed, smoking, exercise, etc).
We can slow down the progression of the disease by:
- Maintaining the correct blood pressure; and
- Keeping our heart healthy by meeting certain target heart rates close to our maximum heart rate during exercise and everyday activities.
| 💡 Find out your patient'sHEART score for cardiovascular risk. |
What's the systolic heart failure life expectancy?
Systolic heart failure is an insufficiency of a heart caused by the malfunction of its left ventricle. This kind of HF is characterized by a low ejection fraction (EF), also taken into account in this heart failure life expectancy calculator.
EF is given in percent, and should be equal to around 50-70%. Mortality increases as the ejection fraction value decreases. The smaller the EF, the shorter the estimated survival.
Unfortunately, plenty of studies proved that the mortality in patients with systolic heart failure and low EF is higher than in those with preserved EF.
For example: 1 year mortality rate for low EF = 26%, and for the high EF = 22%.
How to calculate how long can you live with CHF?
If you'd like to check out how our heart failure life expectancy calculator works, here's the method we used. Add all of the points scored for each separate variable together for the final result.
| Variable | Points |
| Sex | Male, +1 Female, 0 |
| ACEi/ARB | Yes, 0 No, +1 |
| β-blocker | Yes, 0 No, +3 |
| HF history | Yes, +2 No, 0 |
| NYHA | I class, 0 II class, +2 III class, +6 IV class, +8 |
| COPD | Yes, +2 No, 0 |
| Current smoker | Yes, +1 No, 0 |
| Diabetes | Yes, +3 No, 0 |
| Age (in years, when EF <30%) |
<55, 0 55-59, +1 60-64, +2 65-69, +4 70-74, +6 75-79, +8 ≥80, +10 |
| Age (when EF 30-39%) |
<55, 0 55-59, +2 60-64, +4 65-69, +6 70-74, +8 75-79, +10 ≥80, +13 |
| Age (when EF ≥40%) |
<55, 0 55-59, +3 60-64, +5 65-69, +7 70-74, +9 75-79, +12 ≥80, +15 |
| BMI (in kg/m²) |
<15, +6 15-19, +5 20-24, +3 25-29, +2 ≥30, 0 |
| Creatinine (in µmol/L) |
<90, 0 90-109, +1 110-129, +2 130-149, +3 150-169, +4 170-209, +5 210-249, +6 ≥250, +8 |
| Ejection fraction (in %) |
< 20 +7 20-24, +6 25-29, +5 30-34, +3 35-39, +2 ≥40, 0 |
| sBP (in mmHg, EF <30%) |
<110, +5 110-119, +4 120-129, +3 130-139, +2 140-149, +1 ≥150, 0 |
| sBP (EF 30-39%) |
<110, +3 110-119, +2 120-129, +1 130-139, +1 140-149, 0 ≥150, 0 |
| sBP (EF ≥40%) |
<110, +2 110-119, +1 120-129, +1 130-139, 0 140-149, 0 ≥150, 0 |
We based our calculations on the findings of The Meta-Analysis Global Group in Chronic Heart Failure, published by Pocock et all and Freed et all.