End Stage Heart Failure

People, who receive artificial hearts, fall into two categories being “bridge” or “destination.” The “bridge” group, are those people who would most likely die waiting for a suitable donor heart. The “destination” group are those patients who’s body would not suit a donor heart transplant but would benefit in additional years lived from an artificial heart.

The U. S healthcare system undergone major changes in the past 100 years. Scientific advancement coupled with increased sophistication of the health care workforce including physicians and nurses have given an international reputation to U.S health system. Even though weakness can be found like lack of primary health access, high infant mortality rate and increased numbers of uninsured people in U.S. A growing demand of patients with chronic illness over the age of sixty-five, is challenging to the health system.

The solution proposed by this author includes, immediate identification of patients admitted with heart failure and early implementation of interventions to prevent readmissions. Interventions include, care coordination, home health care and remote monitoring as needed. Initially, the recommended process will be presented during a one to one meeting with the Senior Vice President of Health Partner Services with the assistance of a power point presentation, supplemental handouts including the LACE index tool (Appendix A), as well as the proposed policy and procedure (Appendix E). The Senior Vice President of Health Partner Services will serve as the corporate champion and key stakeholder responsible for network provider contracting. Additional

Heart failure is a condition in which the heart muscle is unable to pump enough blood through the heart to meet the body’s need for blood and oxygen. Coronary artery disease is a form of heart disease that effects the chambers of the heart. There are four chambers in the heart. The upper chambers consist of a right and a left atrium and the lower chamber consists of the right and left ventricles. The flow of oxygen rich blood travels from the lungs to the left atrium and into the left ventricle where it is pumped into the rest of the body. When the heart functions properly, all four chambers beat and pump blood effectively in an organized way. The Virtual Medical Centre (Centre, 2008) newsletter states that "Management,

To fail at something means to not succeed at your goal. Oftentimes, our goals are clear in our minds, but we don’t always foresee outside circumstances that may prevent us from reaching our goal. In the stories A Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe and A&P by John Updike, we are shown that it is not always easy to achieve your end goal because things may not play out the way you want. A Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe is a short story about 2 men, one young one old, who live in a house together.

Abate, Zucconi, and Boxer (2011) acknowledge that chronic heart failure is very common and a costly disease. The American Heart Association (n.d.) states that heart failure is one of the most common reasons people 65 and older go to the hospital, therefore, promoting ways to manage the disease and live a better life. Abate et al. (2011) knowing that early ambulation has been proven to have a positive impact on patients; lead them to combine it with canine assisted ambulation to further increase chronic heart failure patients outcomes in a study. They were looking to improve patient’s social and emotional states, shorten their length of stay in the hospital, and get them moving more. Sixty-nine hospitalized patients diagnosed with heart failure

Chronic heart failure is a disease that restricts the quality of life and causes symptoms such as dyspnea and peripheral edema. The daily activities of patients with CHF are often limited and it can cause significant problems socially, physically, and emotionally. The disease usually is accompanied by clinical depression. There is little known about the specific needs of a CHF patients who suffers from depression. A research study was done on 85 patients with CHF to identify the preferences and concerns in regards to psychosocial treatments. A three month study was done to determine what type of treatments patients would be more willing to do. 64.7% of patients preferred supportive talks and low threshold services while only 31.4% wanted

In the American Heart Association (AHA)/American College of Cardiology guidelines1, heart failure (HF) is defined as a complex clinical syndrome that can result from any structural or functional cardiac disorder that impairs the ability of the ventricle to fill or eject blood. A normal healthy heart is a muscular organ with four chambers, two on the right and two on the left, that pumps blood to the lungs and rest of the body2. The two upper chambers are called atria and the two lower chambers are called ventricles. The right atria take in oxygen-poor blood from the rest of the body and sends it back out to the lungs through the right ventricle where the blood becomes oxygenated. Oxygen-rich blood travels from the lungs to the left atrium, then on to the left ventricle, which pumps it to the rest of the body. In a patient with heart failure, the heart muscle has been progressively weakened and unable to pump enough blood through to the body.

There are many considerations when it comes to determining whether an individual should receive a heart transplant or a ventricular assist device. For instance, there are different stages of heart failure. The New York Heart Association classifies heart failure into four distinctive groups (Class I, Class II, Class III, and Class IV) (Jarvik Heart, Inc., 2008, para.2). Class I and Class II patients only experience symptoms with some sort of physical activity,

Organ transplant may be considered if the disease has severely damaged the lungs or the liver.

Project PULSE will be offered to adult active duty servicemen and women, dependent family members, and military retirees who are over 50 years of age and have admitted with a new or preexisting diagnosis heart failure. Tricare beneficiaries who utilize Fort Belvoir Community Hospital’s primary care clinic or any of its specialty care clinics will be eligible to participate. The program does excluded patient’s who have civilian primary care providers however, participation with the Fort Belvoir Heart Failure Clinic for follow-up care will be required as per program instructions.

Overall a heart transplant allows people to live longer, whereas an artificial heart generally only allows a patient to live from a few months to one or two years. Statistically, heart transplants are successful 94% of the time for the first year and 58% of transplant patients survive for 5 years thereafter.

Patients with heart failure (HF) experience an inability of the heart to effectively pump and thus circulate blood through the body. It is estimated that 5.8 million people in the United States alone have HF and it is one of the most common reasons for hospitalizations over the age of 65 (Hall, Levant, & DeFrances, 2012). It can have a devastating impact on the lives of these patients who experience many hospitalizations due to the overwhelming amount of complications associated with this chronic disease causing decreased life expectancy and lower perceived quality of life. CITATION HERE The key to increasing the life expectancy is through frequent monitoring, traditionally at an office. Many patients with HF are often impeded

In acute heart failure, there are many observational registries that describe the disease characteristics but there are very few successful randomized controlled trials in the field of AHF. The opposite is exactly the situation in CHF where there is a plethora of large randomized controlled trials with paucity of registry data. Many of the questions about heart failure in Saudi Arabia, especially for acute hospitalized patients, have been answered in the HEARTS-AHF registry (5, 6). Saudis were at least one decade younger than their counterparts in in the western countries. They also have high incidence of risk factors especially diabetes mellitus and noncompliance to heart failure diet and medications. The majority of heart failure patients

With breathlessness and fatigue presenting as limiting symptoms of chronic Heart Failure (CHF) the muscle hypothesis has proposed linking such symptoms with the peripheral skeletal muscle changes found abnormal in patients with Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) becoming the source of signals affecting cardiorespiratory control.