Objective: Congestive heart failure (CHF) has become one of the most important health care problems in western countries. This article focuses on the outpatient diagnosis and management of heart failure. We want to compare the outcome of patients who were treated with high dose diuretics in the emergency department (ED) without admission with patients who were admitted to hospi...

Cardiac resynchronization represents a novel therapeutic strategy for the treatment of congestive heart failure due to systolic dysfunction. Since its modest beginnings in the 1990s, cardiac resynchronization therapy has gained widespread acceptance as a useful adjunct to pharmacologic therapy for congestive heart failure. Randomized trials have consistently shown functional improvement in pati...

Congestive heart failure as a cause of acute liver failure is rarely documented with only a few cases. Although the pathophysiology is poorly understood, there is rising evidence, that low cardiac output with consecutive reduction in hepatic blood flow is a main causing factor, rather than hypotension. In the setting of acute liver failure due to congestive heart failure, clinical signs of the ...

BACKGROUND In animal studies and a pilot trial in patients with congestive heart failure, the thyroid hormone analog 3,5 diiodothyropropionic acid (DITPA) had beneficial hemodynamic effects. METHODS AND RESULTS This was a phase II multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial of New York Heart Association class II to IV congestive heart failure patients randomized (2:1) to D...

the authors reply: Arias et al. correctly note that diabetes is an independent risk factor for congestive heart failure. Data from the Cardiovascular Health Study have also shown a significant independent relationship between diabetes and the development of congestive heart failure1; most cases of heart failure in that cohort were associated with a normal or near-normal ejection fraction — that...

BACKGROUND In patients with congestive heart failure, the chronotropic and inotropic responses to beta-adrenergic agonists are reduced. It is not known whether desensitization of peripheral beta-adrenoceptors accounts for impaired limb vasodilation in these patients. Accordingly, we studied 14 normal subjects and 13 age-matched patients with congestive heart failure. METHODS AND RESULTS To di...

The aim of the present study was to correlate in cardiomyopathic hamsters with congestive heart failure the levels of atrial and ventricular atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) messenger RNA (mRNA) with immunoreactive ANF (IR-ANF) plasma levels and the relative amount of IR-ANF released by the whole heart versus isolated ventricles in the Langendorff preparation. High-performance liquid chromatogra...