Background: Current clinical practices used to functionally classify heart failure (HF) are time-consuming, expensive,\nor require complex calculations. This study aimed to design an inquiry list from the perspective of traditional\nChinese medicine (TCM) that could be used in routine clinical practice to resolve these problems.\nMethods: The severity of documented HF in 115 patients was classified according to their performance in maximal\nexercise tests into New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional classification (FC) II or NYHA FC III. Concomitantly,\nthe patients were assessed using the new TCM inquiry list and two validated quality of life questionnaires, namely,\nthe Short Form 36 (SF-36) generic scale and the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ).\nFactor analysis was applied to extract the core factors from the responses to the items in TCM inquiry list;\nlogistic regression analysis was then used to predict the severity of HF according to the extracted factors.\nResults: The TCM inquiry list showed moderate levels of correlation with the physical and emotional components\nof the SF-36 and the MLHFQ, and predicted the functional class of HF patients reliably using logistic regression\nanalysis, with a correct prediction rate with 64.3 %. Factor analysis of the TCM inquiry list extracted five core factors,\nnamely, Qi Depression, Heart Qi Vacuity and Blood Stasis, Heart Blood Vacuity, Dual Qi-Blood Vacuity,\nand Yang Vacuity, from the list, which aligned with the perspective of TCM as it relates to the pattern of HF.\nThe correct prediction rate rose to 70.4 % when Dual Qi-Blood Vacuity was combined with the MLHFQ. The excessive\nfalse-negative rate is a problem associated with the TCM inquiry list.\nConclusions: The TCM inquiry list is a simple scale and similar to patient-reported subjective measures of quality of\nlife in HF, and may help to classify patients into NYHA FC II or NYHA FC III. Factor 4 addresses dizziness, dizzy vision\nand general weakness, which are critical parameters that distinguish between NYHA FC II and NYHA FC III.\nIncorporating these three items into the management of HF may help to classify patients from a functional\nperspective.
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