HEART FAILURE MANAGEMENT
IF YOU HAVE HEART FAILURE, YOU CAN LEARN TO LIVE WITH IT, ELIZABETH TRACEY REPORTS
Living Well With Heart Failure is the title of a book by Edward Kasper, chief of clinical cardiology at Johns Hopkins. The book underscores the fact that worldwide, heart failure is becoming much more common. But Kasper says the diagnosis doesn’t have to be a death knell.
KASPER: The take home message is that heart failure is a chronic disease. Like any chronic disease, if you take care of yourself and take the appropriate medications at the right dose the likelihood is that you’re going to do well in the long run. And this is actually quite different from say, 10 or 15 years ago where we didn’t have the right medications and we didn’t know the right doses. In those days people actually did quite poorly with heart failure and the prognosis was pretty dismal. But as we’ve gone forward, developing new therapeutics, the prognosis is getting better. :29
Kasper says getting an appropriate evaluation and management strategy from a physician with expertise in heart failure is vital, as is becoming educated about the condition. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.
