Many studies have reported declining rates of heart failure hospitalisations since the 1990s.1 However, there is increasing evidence that these trends differ by age. Typically, heart failure is a common and insidious disease with substantial associated morbidity and mortality burden worldwide. This has led to a significant focus on improving treatments and medical therapy for this condition, particularly in older populations. Although heart failure is seen as a disease of the elderly, new research suggests that younger patients are being hospitalised for heart failure at an increasing and alarming rate. Chan and colleagues2 report on trends in incident heart failure hospitalisations for the population of New Zealand between 2006 and 2018. Importantly, they suggest a differential trend by age, with incidence in patients aged <50 years increasing on average by 1.5% per year during the study period. In people aged between 50 and 79 years, trend analyses showed generally declining rates until 2013, when rates in men and women in these middle age groups started rising. These trends contrast with those in people aged over 80 years, where a consistent linear decline over the 13-year study period was noted. Comparable trends in younger adults have been reported from a number of whole population studies, including from Denmark,3 Sweden4 and Western Australia,5 yet it is unclear as to why these trends are occurring. The increases in younger age groups reported from these studies were around 50% over study periods between 16 and 20 years, a likely greater magnitude of increase compared with that reported by Chan. The timing of rising incidence rates between populations varies somewhat, with increases in Denmark3 and Sweden4 …

中文翻译：

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心力衰竭：不仅仅是老年人的疾病

许多研究报告自 1990 年代以来心衰住院率下降。1 然而，越来越多的证据表明这些趋势因年龄而异。通常，心力衰竭是一种常见且隐匿的疾病，在全球范围内具有大量相关的发病率和死亡率负担。这导致人们非常关注改善这种情况的治疗和药物治疗，特别是在老年人群中。尽管心力衰竭被视为老年人的一种疾病，但新的研究表明，年轻患者因心力衰竭住院的比例越来越高，而且令人担忧。Chan 及其同事 2 报告了 2006 年至 2018 年间新西兰人口的心力衰竭住院率趋势。重要的是，他们提出了按年龄划分的不同趋势，患者年龄小于 在研究期间，50 年平均每年增长 1.5%。在 50 至 79 岁之间的人群中，趋势分析显示，直到 2013 年，这些中年群体的男性和女性的发病率开始上升。这些趋势与 80 岁以上人群的趋势形成鲜明对比，后者在 13 年的研究期间出现了持续的线性下降。包括丹麦、瑞典 4 和西澳大利亚 5 在内的多项全人口研究报告了年轻人的可比趋势，但尚不清楚为什么会出现这些趋势。在 16 至 20 岁的研究期间，这些研究报告的年轻年龄组增加了约 50%，与 Chan 报告的相比，增加幅度可能更大。