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.