Health Conditions

What is on the horizon?

Heart transplantation has become a widely used treatment of end-stage congestive heart failure. While the goal of treatment of HF is to avoid the need for transplantation, advances in the care of patients with heart transplants will make this a viable option for more people in the future.

Many drugs are being developed for heart failure. These drugs are currently undergoing clinical trials to see how effective they will be for heart failure, including carvedilol controlled-release.

Conivaptan and tolvaptan are two new drugs currently being studied for use in heart failure. These are vasopressin antagonists that may help rid the body of excess fluid to help relieve the "congestion" commonly seen in HF.

Natriuretic peptides are being studied to see if they help urine output when combined with a commonly used diuretic called furosemide. The benefit will be that these two medications will be able to remove more fluid from the body resulting in less "congestion" which can make heart failure worse. Clinical studies are being performed to evaluate the effects of these medications together.

A process known as cardiac resynchronization is currently being studied for patients with heart failure. This process uses electrical stimulation to get the heart to pump better with a pacemaker. The long term effects are not yet known, but it is currently being evaluated to see if this process will be useful to heart failure patients.

Another process known as ultra-filtration is being studied to see if this process will help reduce fluid overload, thus reducing future hospitalizations and emergency room visits. This process is also known as kidney (renal) replacement therapy and is used experimentally in those individuals who have severe heart failure.