How To Treat Heart Failure?

According to American Heart Association, symptoms such as dyspnea, palpitations, or angina can be indicative of a heart failure. Also common symptoms like chronic tiredness, lightheadedness, or lower extremity swelling can be the result of an underlying heart failure (Stern, Behar & Gottlieb, 2003). Physicians (cardiologists) are very concerned when patients report above symptoms as heart failure symptoms surface much after the actual heart failure occurs. Therefore, in an ideal situation, a doctor should be able to detect and treat heart failure much before the symptoms occur. CardioMEMS is the answer to every cardiologist’s prayer. At ORlive.com under the cardiology section, the procedure to implant CardioMEMsTM HF system (Sjm.com, n.d.) is described. In the 1 minute 57 seconds video, an elderly patient named Ray Williamson has had been hospitalized four times in the past two months, and each time, the diagnosis was heart failure. These hospitalizations followed after he complained that his heart was fluttering, and he experienced the same before the present hospitalization too. It …show more content…
In the abovementioned video, cardiologist Bhatt explains that when the heart is unable to pump blood efficiently, the blood pressure rises and the body starts to retain fluid, which eventually manifest as symptoms. Therefore, the treatment goal is to control the blood pressure before related complications occur. CardioMEMS is one such device, which after being implanted in the patient’s body allows the monitoring physician to detect rising blood pressure in the pulmonary artery of the patient. The doctor then can immediately start treating, without waiting for the symptoms to occur. This prevents worsening of the patient’s condition and quick diagnosis of heart failure (Cardiac.broadcastmed.com,