HFpEF and HFmrEF: Can KCCQ-12 Replace KCCQ-23? | JACC Baran

Hosts Mitsuaki Sawano, MD, Kentaro Ejiri, MD, and Nobuhiro Ikemura, MD welcome Dr. Yasuhiro Hamatani, MD (Brigham and Women’s Hospital) to discuss his study, “Interchangeability of the KCCQ-12 and KCCQ-23 across >18,000 Participants Enrolled in 4 Large-Scale Trials of Heart Failure.” Using pooled patient-level data from TOPCAT, PARAGON-HF, DELIVER, and FINEARTS-HF, this study examined whether the shorter 12-item Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ-12) can reliably substitute for the more comprehensive KCCQ-23 in patients with HFmrEF and HFpEF. Across more than 18,000 participants, KCCQ-12 demonstrated extremely high correlation with KCCQ-23, comparable prognostic performance for cardiovascular death and heart failure hospitalization, and nearly identical estimates of treatment effect across multiple therapies and time points. The episode explores why patient-reported outcomes have become central to heart failure drug development, whether reducing questionnaire burden can improve implementation in trials and clinical practice, and how simpler digital health assessments may shape the future of patient-centered care in HFpEF and HFmrEF.