Heart failure (HF) incidence increases worldwide and is affected by various risk factors such as coronary artery disease, hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. Dietary recommendations for patients with HF have generally focused on sodium restriction; however, different nutritional approaches are considered in patients with a high risk of malnutrition due to the diuretic drugs they use. Omega-3 f...

HEART FAILURE (HF) WITH preserved ejection fraction (EF) accounts for more than 50% of the total HF population. Community-based cohort studies have shown that mortality rates are similar in HF with preserved EF compared with HF with reduced EF, but data from large clinical trials point toward a better outcome in HF with preserved EF. This may indicate that comorbidities that are typically exclu...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to assess whether management of heart failure (HF) guided by an individualized N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) target would lead to improved outcome compared with HF management guided by clinical assessment alone. BACKGROUND Natriuretic peptides may be attractive biomarkers to guide management of heart failure (HF) and help select...

AIMS Heart failure with a preserved ejection fraction (HF-PEF) remains a difficult clinical diagnosis. The aim of this study was to test the utility of established criteria to classify patients with HF-PEF. We prospectively enrolled patients into one of five groups across a spectrum of cardiac disease and applied three different criteria for HF-PEF and calculated diagnostic metrics. METHODS A...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Myocardial infarction (MI) is a serious complication of atherosclerosis associated with increasing mortality attributable to heart failure. This study is aimed to assess the global changes in and characteristics of the transcriptome of circular RNAs (circRNAs) in heart tissue during MI induced heart failure (HF). METHODS Using a post-myocardial infarction (MI) model of HF in m...

Heart failure (HF) is an important cardiovascular disease because of its increasing prevalence, significant morbidity, high mortality and rapidly expanding health care costs. The number of HF patients is increasing worldwide and Korea is no exception. Temporal trends of four representative Korean hospitalized HF registries-the Hallym HF study, the Korean Multicenter HF study, the Korean Heart F...

BACKGROUND The paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus plays an important role in the progression of heart failure (HF). We investigated whether cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibition in the PVN attenuates the activities of sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and renin-angiotensin system (RAS) in rats with adriamycin-induced heart failure. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDING Heart failure was i...

BACKGROUND Outcomes of heart failure (HF) have improved dramatically with the use of blockers of the sympathetic and renin-angiotensin-aldosterone systems, as well as with more prevalent use of implantable cardiac defibrillators and cardiac resynchronization therapy. Despite these interventions, however, the overall prognosis of HF patients remains poor. Recently, stimulation of the right cervi...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the positive predictive value (PPV) of a diagnosis of heart failure (HF) in the Danish National Registry of Patients (NRP) among patients admitted to a University Hospital cardiac care unit, and to evaluate the impact of misdiagnosing HF. DESIGN The NRP was used to identify patients with heart failure from July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2007. Heart failure was defined in accor...