Matti Vuori defended his doctoral thesis “Heart Failure: Risk Factors and the Validity of Diagnoses”.
Heart failure is a global health problem, but its risk factors remain understudied. Furthermore, the validity of heart failure entries in Finnish Hospital Discharge Register has not been evaluated with full clinical data before.
Vuori observed that the strongest mediators of heart failure in diabetes were the direct effect of diabetes itself and the indirect effects of diabetes mediated by obesity, cardiac strain/volume overload, and hyperglycemia, while no direct connection was found to salt intake. He also validated the Finnish Hospital Discharge Register based diagnoses of heart failure and explored heart failure subtyping by datamining.
This thesis adds to our understaning in heart failure risk factors and validity of register based diagnoses of heart failure, thus benefiting the scientific community and the public health.