Study limitations
Despite the multicenter design of the study, the number of patients enrolled were rather limited, thus affecting the power of the analysis. Some variables were missing and needed to be imputed for multivariate analyses. The amount of data that was missing was higher than 50% for some variables and thus, these could not be included to the multivariate analyses. Most notable of those were natriuretic peptides, and it remains to be determined whether ACEF-MDRD score has additional usefulness over natriuretic peptides. Finally, while present findings provide an external verification for the ACEF-MDRD score, more data from additional studies would increase the reliability for future clinical use of ACEF-MDRD score in HF patients.