Nutrition self-care in heart failure: state of the science.

The purposes of this article were to describe the state of science in nutrition self-care in heart failure and make recommendations for future research. Four areas of nutrition self-care were reviewed: sodium restriction recommendations, nutrition recommendations, body weight recommendations, and self-care strategies. A review of the available evidence demonstrated that the current state of knowledge in each of these 4 areas is insufficient for clinicians to provide evidence-based interventions to improve nutrition self-care. Subsequently, research priorities in each area were identified. Although there is a growing recognition of the important role that nutrition may play in heart failure outcomes, advancements in our knowledge base are needed before nutrition self-care can evolve into an essential component of heart failure self-care.