Self-care behaviors in patients with systolic heart failure

Background and purpose: to improve life quality, and lower mortality and rehospitalization for heart failure patients, awareness and adherence to self-care behaviors are essential. this study aims to determine the adherence level to self-care behaviors in the patients with systolic heart failure hospitalized in alborz hospital in karaj andshahriar hospital, and it was conducted in 2013.methods: in this cross-sectional study, 100 patients with at least one year experience of developing heart failure and ejection fraction below 40% were studied. they were admitted to alborz social security hospital of karaj and the social security hospital shahriar during 2012-2013. they were selected through convenience sampling. demographic data and european heart failure self-care behavior questionnaires were completed through interviews. data analysis has been done using spss, v.18 and independent t-test and anova.results: 84% of the subjects had moderate and 10% had poor adherence to self-care. the best adherence to self-care behaviors was related to the drug and diet regimen and the poorest to the daily weight control and exercise. there was a significant relationship between self-care behaviors and age (p=0.011), marital status (p=0.008), the number of chronic diseases (p=0.048), hypertension (p=0.038), chronic pulmonary obstruction (p=0.029), renal disease (p=0.017) and severity of the disease (p=0.032).conclusion: adherence to self-care behaviors in heart failure patients is not appropriate. training and following up self-care behaviors should focus on the specific problems of aging, social support, diet and drug regimens simplification and its relation with other chronic diseases.