[Epidemiology of heart failure].

Heart failure is a common and clinically relevant disease, whose prevalence is progressively increasing with the ageing of the population and the improvement in treatments. Within this condition, acute heart failure (AHF) has at present the higher burden on mortality and hospitalization rates. This results from both suboptimal management and difficulties in estimating the actual frequency of AHF. This paper is focused on AHF epidemiology based on reliable Italian national and regional data.