Why it matters: Heart failure affects more than 6 million U.S. adults and is expected to rise in the coming decades. Black adults in the U.S. are first hospitalized for heart failure nearly 14 years earlier than white adults, reports a Northwestern Medicine study that analyzed data from more than 42,000 patients across hundreds of hospitals nationwide. The study also found that Hispanic patients were hospitalized about eight years earlier than white patients, and Asian patients about three years earlier. On average, white patients were first hospitalized for heart failure at age 73.6, Asian American patients at 70.6, Hispanic patients at 65.4 and Black patients at 60.1. Huang and his colleagues analyzed hospital records from over 42,000 patients across 713 hospitals between 2016 and 2019 using the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines – Heart Failure Registry.