Thirst in patients with heart failure

AN INTERNATIONAL PROJECT

The aim of the study is to describe thirst frequency, thirst intensity and thirst distress, and factors related to thirst of patients with chronic HF from 10-15 countries, across continents.

Introduction

Thirst can be a prominent problem for patients with heart failure (HF), but still scarcely a subject in research and practice. Several factors are related to thirst of HF patients and based on previous studies on self-care in HF patients we also hypothesize that thirst, the factors related to thirst and the interventions to relieve thirst might be different per country. This might for example be caused by local food habits, temperature, use of non-pharmacological interventions (e.g. fluid restriction) etc. In order to get insight in the relevance of thirst of HF patients in different countries and to target and individualize specific intervention for HF patients related to thirst in each country, it is important to have a description of prevalence of thirst, thirst intensity, thirst distress and related factors in different countries. An international cross-sectional survey study will be conducted in 2019-2020. 

News

2019-11-16 The International Project Thirst in Patients with Heart Failure is proceeding. We now have the TDS-HF in 15 different languages and English version, and 5 more language translations are ongoing. Several countries are preparing for the project to be started or already including patients.

The most recent language versions of the TDS-HF are from India, Poland, Indonesia and Iran.