Heart Failure Health Center

News Related to Heart Failure

31. Hospital Stays Shorter for Heart Failure
    

    June 1, 2010 -- The average hospital stay for heart failure has declined from almost nine days to just over six days in a little over a decade, but there is new evidence patients may be being sent home too soon. The current Medicare fee-for-service system rewards hospitals for discharging patients s

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32. Clip Closes Door on Leaky Heart Valves
    

    March 17, 2010 (Atlanta) -- A clothespin-type device that clips together the partially open doors of leaky heart valves may spare some patients the need for open heart surgery, doctors say. In a new study, the clip was safer and worked nearly as well as surgery for people with the leaky valve condit

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33. 2/3 of Heart Failure Patients Don't Get Major Drug
    

    Oct. 20, 2009 -- More than two-thirds of patients hospitalized with serious heart failure aren't prescribed an aldosterone antagonist, a recommended therapy that increases the odds of survival. Aldosterone is a hormone that is released in the setting of heart failure. It causes salt and water retent

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34. Study Questions Heart Device for Women
    

    Sept. 14, 2009 -- Implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) may not reduce deaths in women with heart failure, according to a new research review. The review, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, is based on data from five studies that together included 3,810 men and 934 women with h

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35. Heart Failure Different in Women
    

    July 27, 2009 -- Women with heart failure live longer than men with the disease, but they have more illness and hospitalizations and poorer overall quality of life, a review of the research shows. The analysis confirms that men and women often have different risk factors for developing heart failure

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36. Healthy Lifestyle Halves Heart Failure Risk
    

    July 21, 2009 -- Men who follow a healthy lifestyle may cut their risk of heart failure in half. Researchers say it’s the first time a large study has shown that modifiable lifestyle factors, such as diet, exercise, alcohol use, and smoking, can have a significant impact on the lifetime risk of cong

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37. 4 Factors That Increase Odds of Heart Failure
    

    June 9, 2009 -- Smoking, high blood pressure, excess weight, and diabetes are major risk factors for increasing the size of the heart's left ventricle (the main pumping chamber) a new study shows. An increase in the size and thickness, or "mass," of the left ventricle is a worrisome condition that c

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38. Heart Failure: Belly Fat Bad, Exercise Good
    

    April 7, 2009 -- Belly fat may make heart failure more likely, and exercise may help heart failure patients. That's the bottom line from three new studies on heart failure. Heart failure does not mean that the heart has stopped working; it means the heart is unable to pump enough blood to meet the b

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39. Blacks Have High Heart Failure Risk
    

    March 18, 2009 -- One in 100 African-Americans will suffer heart failure in the prime of his or her life, a startling new study shows. That's 20 times white Americans' risk of heart failure before age 50. "Blacks in their 30s and 40s develop heart failure at rates seen in whites in their 50s and 60s

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40. Elevated Death Risk After Heart Attack
    

    Nov. 4, 2008 -- Heart attack patients face the highest risk of dying from sudden cardiac death within the first month after heart attack. That's according to a new study by researchers from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The study appears in the Nov. 5 issue of The

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