Marques-Alves P, Marinho AV, Almeida JP, et al. - Researchers investigated the characteristics and outcomes of a large contemporaneous Portuguese cohort of acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) patients admitted to the emergency department (ED). In this retrospective study, they assessed 1,024 patients (Mean age: 78 ± 10 years; 53% male) who were admitted with a discharge diagnosis of ADHF from November 2016 to December 2017. Five hundred fifty-four of these patients (54%) were hospitalized. Observations revealed the median hospitalization length of 9 (IQR, 5–15) days, and in-hospital mortality of 12.7%. Hospitalized patients were mainly men (56% vs 47%), younger (77 ± 9 vs 79 ± 11 years) and had greater creatinine values and B-type natriuretic peptide values than discharged patients. Patients with prior hospitalization reported to have a lower 30-day readmission rate (8% vs 14%), same overall readmission rate (30% vs 32%), and higher 30 day (13% vs 5%) and overall mortality rates (28% vs 15%). Findings here suggest the significant predictive value of the clinical and analytical status in the ED for hospitalization.