Abstract: Objective To investigate the effect of graded nursing guided by Modified Early Warning Score (MEWS) in preventing complications in elderly patients with severe heart failure. Methods A total of 76 elderly patients with severe heart failure who were admitted to our hospital from January 2020 to May 2022 were enrolled as subjects and were divided into control group and observation group by drawing lots, with 38 patients in each group. The patients in the control group were given routine graded nursing intervention, and those in the observation group were given MEWS-guided nursing intervention in addition to the intervention in the control group. The two groups were compared in terms of MEWS, critically ill conditions, hospitalization-related indices, cardiac function, complications, and adverse events. Results After nursing, the observation group had significantly lower MEWS and critically ill score than the control group (P<0.05). The observation group had significantly shorter length of hospital stay and duration of mechanical ventilation than the control group (P<0.05). After nursing, compared with the control group, the observation group had a significantly higher left ventricular ejection fraction and significantly lower left ventricular end-diastolic diameter and left ventricular end-systolic diameter (P<0.05). Compared with the control group, the observation group had significantly lower overall incidence rates of complications (7.89% vs 26.30%, P<0.05) and adverse events (2.63% vs 21.04%, P<0.05). Conclusion For patients with severe heart failure, MEWS-guided nursing intervention can reduce the critical degree of conditions, improve cardiac function, reduce complications and adverse events, and shorten the length of hospital stay.

Key words: Graded nursing, Modified Early Warning Score, Severe heart failure