New draft classification of chronic heart failure of the Russian Society of Cardiology: are there any obvious advantages over the current ones?

In the interests of practical healthcare, routine classifications should be modified as rarely as possible. At the same time changes should be discarded only on sufficient grounds, for example, when there are no obvious advantages of a new classification over the existing ones or they can no longer be modified by introducing fundamental changes and amendments. In this regard, the evolution of approaches to the classification of chronic heart failure (CHF) is prominent. It becomes particularly relevant due to the fact that currently experts of the Russian Society of Cardiology (RSC) are actively discussing a new draft classification of CHF. The authors of the lecture gave a brief historical insight and reviewed the main classifications of CHF used in North America, Europe, and Russia. The new classification of CHF proposed by RSC experts, which is actually a modified classification of North American colleagues, does not have obvious advantages over the currently used CHF classification in Russia (since 2002). The latter is based on the classification by Vasilenko – Strazhesko which is familiar to domestic internists, since it has become an indispensable part of their clinical practice and has stood the test of time. In addition, its underlying principles provide the potential for its flexible modification.