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Purpose: Aging is associated with losses in hearing and vision. The objective of this study was to assess whether aging also is associated with less ability to detect and interpret afferent physiological information.

Design: A cross‐sectional mixed methods study was conducted with 29 persons with a confirmed diagnosis of chronic heart failure of at least 6 months duration. The sample was divided at the median to compare younger (<73 years) versus older (≥73 years) patients in the ability to detect and interpret their heart failure symptoms.

Methods: Shortness of breath was stimulated using a 6‐minute walk test (6MWT) and used to assess the ability of heart failure patients to detect shortness of breath using the Borg measure of perceived exertion compared with gold standard ratings of each person's shortness of breath by trained registered nurse research assistants (inter‐rater congruence 0.91). Accuracy of …