Introduction: The Heart Failure (HF) surveys and registries have been developed with the intention to characterize this patient population and to improve diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis according to established guidelines of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). We aimed to provide an overview of past, current, and future European HF registries and to integrate clinical information obtained from these registries.

Patients and Methods: The data of EuroHeart Failure Survey (EHFS), ESC-HF Pilot Survey (ESC-HF Pilot), ESC HF Long-Term Registry (ESC-HF-LT-R) and Croatian Heart Failure Registry (CRO-HF-R) were analyzed.

Results: The results from EHFS published more than a decade ago suggested that specific clinical investigations for patients with suspected HF such as echocardiography were not performed as frequently as recommended by the ESC. Several years later, the ESC-HF Pilot Survey that encompassed 136 cardiology centers from 12 European countries showed that ischemic etiology of HF was reported in about half of the patients while acute decompensation of HF was the most common clinical profile of acute HF. More recently, results from ESC-HF-LT-R showed that the presence of diabetes markedly increased the risk of 1-year adverse events in HF outpatients and that diabetes treatment was suboptimal. Likewise, the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease frequently coexists in HF and is associated with an increase in all-cause and HF-related hospitalizations during the 1-year follow-up. (1) Data acquired from the CRO-HF-R revealed that disease presentation in HF might differ between women and men. For instance, women had a significantly higher proportion of HF with preserved left ventricular ejection fraction and had higher lipid and uric acid levels compared to men, while men had significantly lower hemoglobin levels and reduced left ventricular ejection fraction compared to women. (2) Finally, latest established version of European HF registry, HF III Registry will continue to gather relevant information about this patient population in modern clinical practice.

Conclusion: Registries are an important source of information about characteristics, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of HF patients and as such will continue to provide a relevant clinical information in the future.