Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a major and growing health problem around the world. In Africa, heart failure seems to be attributable mostly to systolic dysfunction and occurs as a major complication of high blood pressure. As a contribution to decreasing mortality of acute myocardial infarction and better treatment of high blood pressure as well as congestive heart failure the number of patients in heart failure have increased substantially. In contrast to the Framingham Study, nowadays coronary artery disease is the most prevalent etiology of congestive heart failure followed by hypertensive heart disease. The main objective of the study is to relate the principle causes leading to heart failure in our department.

It is a transversal retrospective study conducted between May 2006 and June 2019 including all patients beyond the age of 14 with congestive heart failure followed-up in the therapeutic unit of heart failure of our department. The data were collected on Excel and analyzed using SPSS 2.0 software. We studied cardiovascular risk factors prevalence and causes repartition among these patients.

The mean age was 64,92±12,95 years, sex ratio H/F was 1,7, the prevalence of hypertension was 38,9%, 30,4% were diabetic, 31,9% were smokers, 9,9% were dyslipidemic. The leading cause of CHF among our patients was ischemic heart disease (76,81%), 13,47% dilated cardiomyopathy, 4,83% valvular heart disease, 2,38% cardiac toxicity, 0,9% of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, 0,4% peripartum cardiomyopathy, 0,3% arrhythmia–induced cardiomyopathy.

Our data show a high incidence of ischemic heart disease. Despite advances in our therapies for ischemic heart disease and hypertension, CHF remains a common and highly lethal condition. There is accumulating evidence that treatment of hypertension and ischemic heart disease can decrease the incidence of clinical CHF, related morbidity and mortality.