©2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Persons with heart failure (HF) have four times the risk of having cognitive impairment compared with the general population and display different patterns of cognitive impairment. This secondary analysis of a published cross‐sectional study of 90 community‐dwelling adults examined the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scores and HF differentiated as systolic and diastolic HF. Mean MoCA score was 22.9 (standard deviation±2.31) in persons with systolic HF (n=69) and 24.8 (standard deviation±2.76) in persons with diastolic HF (n=21) with statistically significant mean difference between groups (t=−2.025, P=.030). Independent t test on the eight MoCA domain scores and systolic and diastolic HF indicated significance on visuo‐spatial/executive function (P=.026), attention (P=.049), abstraction (P=.014), and delayed recall (P=.048). Findings from this study support the need for including persons with systolic and diastolic HF in future researches on identifying varying cognitive profiles to plan tailored cognitive intervention.