CardioExchange Archive

November 14th, 2010

ASCEND-HF: Nesiritide Is Safe But Not Effective

Larry Husten, PHD

ASCEND-HF (Acute Study of Clinical Effectiveness of Nesiritide in Decompensated Heart Failure Trial) was started in response to the enormous controversy over the safety and efficacy of nesiritide, which was being used in growing numbers of heart failure patients.  The trial randomized 7141 patients with acute, decompensated HF to receive standard therapy and either continuous intravenous nesiritide or placebo. Results of ASCEND-HF, presented as a […]

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November 14th, 2010

Emphatic Support for Eplerenone in NYHA Class II Heart Failure

Larry Husten, PHD

Aldosterone antagonists have proven beneficial in heart failure patients with moderate-to-severe symptoms and in MI patients with LV dysfunction and heart failure. Now EMPHASIS-HF (Eplerenone in Mild Patients Hospitalization and Survival Study in Heart Failure) has extended these benefits to patients with systolic HF and mild symptoms. EMPHASIS HF randomized 2737 patients with NYHA class II […]

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November 11th, 2010

Heart Failure: A Scary Name That Doesn’t Make Sense

Mary Knudson, Health Journalist

Well-known science journalist Mary Knudson is the author of HeartSense, a blog about heart failure, from which the following post is taken. In this post, she questions the aptness of the designation “heart failure.” For the last week, I have been mulling over the term heart failure, questioning how the collective conditions that bear this label ever got such a name, […]

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November 3rd, 2010

My Journey with Heart Failure

Mary Knudson, Health Journalist

Well-known science journalist Mary Knudson is the author of HeartSense, a blog about heart failure, from which the following post is taken. In this post, she describes her journey as a heart failure patient from bewildered dismay to self-empowerment; in an upcoming post, she questions the aptness of the designation “heart failure.”   I got to […]

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November 2nd, 2010

Meta-Analysis Provides Little Support for Prophylactic ICD Use in Older Adults

Amy Herman

Prophylactic implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) therapy does not appear to significantly improve survival among older adults with severe left ventricular dysfunction, according to a meta-analysis in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers analyzed data from five randomized trials comparing ICD therapy with medical treatment among some 5800 adults with cardiomyopathy. Older adults (defined as 60 and older […]

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October 12th, 2010

Heart Failure and Resource Use at the End of the Road

Larry Husten, PHD

Two studies of heart failure populations — one conducted in the U.S. and one in Canada —  shed light on patterns of resource use in the last 6 months of life. Both studies appear in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Kathleen Unroe and colleagues retrospectively analyzed resource use in a cohort of nearly 230,000 U.S. Medicare […]

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August 29th, 2010

Downshifting Heart Rate in HF Found Beneficial

Larry Husten, PHD

In the SHIFT trial, Karl Swedberg and colleagues tested the effects of ivabradine, a selective sinus-node inhibitor, in 6558 patients with heart failure who had a heart rate ≥70 bpm. After a median 23 months of follow-up, the rate of cardiovascular death or hospital admission for worsening heart failure was 24% in the ivabradine group […]

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August 24th, 2010

Study Suggests Prognostic Power of Dyspnea in Acute Heart Failure

Larry Husten, PHD

Results of a study with the hormone relaxin suggest that a lack of ongoing dyspnea relief may be an important predictor of outcome. Marco Metra and fellow investigators in the Pre-RELAX-AHF study randomized 232 patients with acute heart failure to placebo or one of 4 doses of relaxin. Only 25% of all patients in the […]

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August 16th, 2010

A Treat for Chocolate Lovers from Sweden

Larry Husten, PHD

In a report that will surely provide comfort to millions, a study of 31,823 Swedish women found that over 9 years of follow-up, women who regularly consumed moderate amounts of chocolate had a lower risk for developing heart failure than those who ate no chocolate at all. However, no protective effect was observed in women […]

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August 10th, 2010

Allopurinol in Gout and Heart Failure

Larry Husten, PHD

Thanassoulis and colleagues analyzed data from 25,000 Canadian heart failure (HF) patients in a paper appearing in Archives of Internal Medicine. They found that patients with a recent or remote history of gout were at high risk for HF readmission or death. Although there was no significant association between allopurinol use in the overall study population, […]

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