Blood pressure and the therapy of advanced heart failure.

n the 1960s, when we initially introduced the concept of asodilator therapy for the failing heart (1), we had to vercome skepticism about the safety and efficacy of this pproach. Health care workers were focused on ausculatory lood pressure (BP), which often was falsely reduced in sick atients (2), and vasoconstrictor drugs frequently were dministered to restore perceived low pressure, which was hought to be harmful. The idea that vasodilator drugs, hich are designed to lower pressure, would be safe in such n individual was anathema.