Economic repercussions of cardiac insufficiency in France

The aim of the article is to review economic and public health consequences of congestive heart failure in France. This disease with an increasing prevalence induces for the social security system and the society a high cost; 85 to 93% of this cost are bound to hospitalisations, most of them avoidable. New modalities of care are to be chosen in order to improve the management of heart failure and to contain costs. In this context, multidisciplinary interventions based on patients' education are experimented taking care to assure a greater role to health actors working in the ambulatory sector (GPs, private cardiologists, nurses).