Heart Failure

Rehospitalization is becoming a growing concern in the health care field with health systems facing financial consequences if they do not reach certain benchmarks. A recent study of an approved medication showed benefits in this area that could help patients and providers alike.

A considerable amount of research has been done into the neurological issues facing football players but work is also being done to study the impact on the heart of some of the larger players on the field as well.

There are medications currently available to help patients diagnosed with heart failure but many do not address quality of life of these patients after treatment. A new medication being investigated could help with both issues of patient care.

The contrast media injected into patients' vascular systems in a heart procedure can cause injuries to the kidneys. That is particularly true for patients with chronic kidney disease. Diluting the effect by hydrating a patient helps, but can risk overloading the heart. Chinese doctors offer a solution.

Ventricular assist devices (VADs) are literally life savers for some patients with heart failure, however, the technology can be accompanied by serious risks.

Older patients with heart and kidney failure can be helped with cardiac resynchronization therapy, a new study finds. But implanting devices to treat them is expensive, invasive, and not a full cure for many patients. Maybe it's better to ask these patients if they wouldn't rather die, two physicians argue.

When a medical condition is paired with another, it could make for a trickier situation. New research found that some diseases can significantly impact platelet function while others appear to have no effect.

Depression affects 20-40 percent of heart failure patients and is often linked to loss of motivation/ interest/confidence, lower quality of life, sleep disturbances, and changes in appetite with related weight changes.

Even in hospital settings patients can suffer fatal cardiac events if they are not properly monitored. This is especially true at night when staffing numbers drop and families are not with their loved ones until morning.

There may be a link between the inflammatory proteins that cause rheumatoid arthritis and the development of heart valve disease.

Study results suggest that gout itself and not hyperuricemia alone is associated with left ventricular diastolic dysfunction and left atrial volume enlargement.

When patients have a defibrillator implated they have many concerns about their overall health, including how it affects their sex life. Research has shown the importance of doctors and their patients working together through these issues.

While warfarin has long been a common treatment option for patients with atrial fibrillation new medications are coming to the market which provide different benefits than the original option.

Automatic external defibrillators are becoming more common throughout the country and the world helping to save countless lives. However with some devices not available at all times of the day there are questions about how they could be used more effectively

Injecting globs of a biopolymer based on brown algae into the heart muscle of patients with advanced heart disease helped halt or reverse disease. The procedure is meant to thicken the ventricle wall. That reduces pumping stress.

Type 2 diabetes drug empagliflozin significantly diminished the incidences of hospitalizations and even death from heart failure.

New research provides further evidence that data collected by pacemakers can be used to speed the detection of atrial fibrillation.

There are approximately 500,000 new cases of heart disease every year, and with heart failure being a potential complication in many of those cases, effective therapies are necessary.

Patients with early rheumatoid arthritis may have reduced myocardial and vascular function.

A device manufacturer's decision to halt a trial of a pump-and-filter system that removes excess salt and fluid from heart failure patients left researchers with promising but statistically insignificant data. It also raised questions about whether that manufacturer acted ethically.

Obesity is a growing problem around the world and new research has shown that even small amounts of physical exercise can make a big difference in keeping people from gaining too much weight.

As the European Society of Cardiology wraps up another successful congress in London there remains a buzz about the work being done by doctors around the world to help patients with a variety of conditions.

Congestive heart failure is a serious condition facing people around the world. Early trials of a gene therapy have showed promise to not only help these patients with the condition but also make their hearts healthier.

With the introduction of two new medications cardiologists have powerful new tools to use in order to help heart failure become an even more manageable condition.

On a daily basis cardiologists face patients with a wide variety of conditions. A review of recent studies show just how far the treatment of many of these conditions have come.

California researchers report good results in a phase II study of a gene therapy for congestive heart failure. The news comes five months after Celladon's Mydicar gene therapy for CHF failed to meet its trial's endpoints.

A study published in Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders indicates that sodium glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT2 inhibitors, which affect both supply and demand pathways in the heart) may be the preferred treatment for diabetics with heart failure.

If a patient requires bypass surgery one of the factors doctors will look at when considering the operation is the person's blood pressure. A recent study looked at whether it could be safe to operate when the patient's pressure is higher or lower than previously accepted.

Several large groups combined data to look at results of a study on heart failure patients to see whether age and gender affected treatment options prescribed by patients.

While digoxin has been a popular medication in the past, particularly for patients with atrial fibrillation, a recent study looked at whether the medication was indeed beneficial for treatment when compared to placebo or no pharmaceutical therapy at all. Digoxin may be a popular treatment for some patients, but often doctors cannot look at just one condition when treating and have to consider multiple factors and issues.