Heart Failure Management
If you have been diagnosed with heart failure, your heart muscle isn’t pumping effectively, and blood isn’t circulating properly. When fluids back up into your lungs, it is called congestive heart failure. We can help you manage your condition and improve your quality of life.
Heart Failure Medications
Almost every heart failure treatment plan includes medications. We've listed the most common heart failure medications below:
• ACE inhibitors (angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors), ARBs (angiotensin II receptor antagonists) and Beta Blockers: These medications relieve stress on the heart’s pumping action. They improve symptoms and reduce hospitalizations for patients with heart failure.
• Diuretics: These medications rid your body of excess fluid.
• Blood Thinners: These medications can reduce the risk of strokes and heart attacks.
• Digitalis: This medication helps decrease heart failure symptoms.
Heart Procedures
Some patients with heart failure benefit from different heart procedures, including the following:
• Angioplasty, Stent Placement, or Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery: These procedures either open or "bypass" blocked arteries and improve blood flow to your heart muscle.
• Heart Valve Repair or Replacement: Patients with heart failure may have damage to their heart valves. Surgical repair or replacement may be needed to improve the heart’s pumping function.
• Biventricular Pacemaker or Implantable Cardiac Defibrillator (ICD): These are small electronic devices that are implanted below your collarbone. They help time the electrical signals in your heart so your heart beats more effectively. This therapy is also called biventricular pacing or cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT).
Bradycardia
Bradycardia is when your heart beats too slowly, generally less than 60 beats per minute. It becomes serious when your heart beats so slowly that it can’t pump enough blood to meet your body’s needs.
Managing Other Medical Conditions
An important part of treating heart failure is carefully managing other medical conditions that can make your heart failure worse. These include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. If you take medications to treat these conditions, take them faithfully.
Heart Transplant and Ventricular Assist Devices
Heart transplantation and ventricular assist devices are therapies for advanced heart failure. Advanced heart failure means you have tried the treatments listed above, but your heart failure keeps getting worse.