BACKGROUND: The aim was to examine whether a single question about global perceived health (GPH) is associated with the domains of health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) as assessed by the SF-36, and whether the scores in these domains differ from the different scores of the GPH in relation to left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). METHOD: The study included 412 elderly outpatients with symptoms of heart failure (HF). Echocardiography was used to determine their LVEF, and GPH was assessed by the first question on the SF-36. RESULTS: The correlations between GPH and the different domains in SF-36 ranged from 0.33 to 0.64 in patients with LVEF>or=50% and was between 0.29 and 0.59 in patients with LVEF