Diuretics as pathogenetic treatment for heart failure

Diuretics as pathogenetic treatment for heart failure

Increased intracardiac filling pressure or congestion causes symptoms and leads to hospital admissions in patients with heart failure, regardless of their systolic function. A history of hospital admission, in turn, predicts further hospitalizations and morbidity, and a higher number of hospitalizations determine higher mortality. Congestion is therefore the driving force of the natural history...

Physiological rationale for co-treatment with diuretics in heart failure.

Contemporary treatment of heart failure should be based on an understanding of its pathophysiology. Only in recent years has the complex involvement of many systems in this syndrome become widely recognised. The systemic response to impaired left ventricular function generates a wide array of symptoms and physiological derangements that may contribute to the natural history of the syndrome. The...

Diuretics in congestive heart failure

Diuretics (see Table 1.1 for a physiological classification) remain an important part of the medical therapy for patients with congestive heart failure (CHF). They control fluid retention and rapidly relieve the congestive symptoms of heart failure (HF). The American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association assigned them a class I indication in patients with symptomatic heart failure wh...

Haemodynamic effects of diuretics in heart failure.

The organic mercurials have been known to have a diuretic effect since the sixteenth century, but their use for treating dropsy first began in 1920 in Vienna, when it was realised that a mercury compound being used to treat syphilis greatly increased urine output. The direct descendant of that compound was mersalyl, which was to remain the drug of choice until 1951, when the carbonic anhydrase ...

Vascular effects of diuretics in heart failure.