An audit of patients with heart failure suggests that their prospects of survival are improved if they are admitted to a specialist cardiology unit instead of a general NHS ward where they are more than twice as likely to die.

The research, conducted by universities and hospitals around the UK and published in the journal Heart, also found that women fared worse than men when it came to getting the right investigations and treatment.

The authors, who studied more than 6,000 patients at 86 hospitals in England and Wales with the average age of those being admitted around 78, said that "prognosis of patients hospitalised with heart failure remains poor".

Their audit - which considered factors such as investigations patients received, any specialist management, how long people stayed in hospital and death rates - concluded that patients on general wards were 2.5 times more likely to die than those admitted to cardiology wards.

With an ageing population in the UK, the number of people with the condition - around 900,000 - would appear to be set to rise, and more specialist services might be needed to ensure the number of those dying - a quarter of a million a year in England and Wales - does not increase.

Copyright ⌐ Press Association 2011