• follow up
• heart failure
• old patients

Heart failure (HF) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality, and causes high health-care-related costs, posing a great burden on both patient and society. Despite improvements in heart failure therapies over the past two decades, risk of mortality remains high, and this is particularly true in the first month after discharge. After the initial diagnosis, HF patients are hospitalized once every year on average. The aim of the study is to evaluate main causes of readmission in patients hospitalized for acute HF (HF relapse or "other causes"). Secondly, we want to verify clinical differences between patients who are re-hospitalized for HF and the ones who are re-hospitalized for “other causes”, defining reciprocal independent predictors. Finally we want to prove the beneficial effect of a geriatric follow up for outpatients in terms of mortality and readmission.