A new study finds that heart failure patients that struggle to carry out day-to-day tasks such as getting dressed or climbing stairs are more likely to be hospitalized and die early.

"Difficulty with daily living is easy to assess in a routine doctor's visit, and can provide important information to help guide conversations about goals of care," explains study author Dr. Shannon Dunlay.

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To investigate this, researchers analyzed data from questionnaires completed by 1,128 patients.

Some 20 percent of heart failure patients were obese and almost all of them had other medical conditions. This includes 36 percent with diabetes, 57 percent with anemia, and a whopping 87 percent with high blood pressure.

Furthermore, about 60 percent of these patients had difficulty with at least one task at the beginning of the study.

The study also showed that older women, unmarried people and those who suffer from obesity, diabetes, or from anemia had increased difficulty with daily activities and mobility than those who did not. Not surprisingly, heart failure patients who also had dementia had twice the difficulty daily tasks as those without dementia.

The researchers suspect the difficulty with daily activities is not completely attributable to the participants' heart failure. Most heart failure patients are elderly and experiencing other chronic conditions.

"As far as marital status, it may be that having a spouse masks difficulty with activities in daily living if the spouse is able to compensate by, for example, doing all of the housework and cleaning. When a person with mobility difficulty doesn't have that safety net in place, difficulty with activities in daily living may become more apparent," Dr. Dunlay said.

The study was published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

TagsHeart failure, anemia, high blood pressure, Diabetes, heart problem