EDITORIAL Assessing prognosis in heart failure: you can see a lot if you look, but more if you look again.........

This editorial refers to ‘Usefulness of clinical and NT-proBNP monitoring for prognostic guidance in destabi-lized heart failure outpatients’ † by D.A. Pascual-Figal et al., on page 1011 The management of an individual patient should encompass not only consideration of the diagnosis and appropriate treatment, but also assessment of prognosis. This is particularly so in the case of the patient suffering from a condition which may reasonably be expected to have an impact on life expectancy and on quality of life. Chronic heart failure (CHF) certainly meets these criteria, having an impact on prognosis as severe as that of many of the common malignancies1 and on quality of life as severe as other chronic conditions. Current national and international guidelines, including those of the European Society of Cardiology,2 recognize that assessment of prognosis should be a part of the standard management of th