Advancing the Advances in Heart Failure: Updates on Newer Therapies

Abstract

Marc A. Silver, MD, Co-Editor in Chief From the Department of Medicine and the Heart Failure Institute, Advocate Christ Medical Center, Oak Lawn, IL Address for correspondence: Marc A. Silver, MD, Chairman and Clinical Professor, Department of Medicine and the Heart Failure Institute, Advocate Christ Medical Center, 4440 West 95th Street, Suite 319 South, Oak Lawn, IL 60453-2600 E-mail: marc.silver@advocatehealth.com In January 2005, we issued a call for papers to focus on updates on some of the new and emerging therapies for patients with heart failure. We specifically asked potential authors to focus on biventricular resynchronization and left ventricular assist devices. This focus was prudent, because although clinical trial publications and early adoption of these strategies were of recent vintage, we felt that these were two key therapeutic areas where the field was evolving on a daily basis. Furthermore, as a heart failure community, we must test our tools every day. There is no room here for a strategy or therapy that does not provide continued significant improvement in heart failure outcomes for patients. So the call went out and authors responded. Included in this issue are four of these papers. One deals with updates on selecting responders to resynchronization therapy—a hot topic indeed. Two others deal with advances in patient selection and care for potential left ventricular assist device recipients and potential new complications to be aware of. We are also pleased to have the excellent paper by Faris and colleagues representing an important FDA perspective on both resynchronization and left ventricular assist devices. And as these papers are published, it is my hope that they soon become obsolete. We should push ourselves to test the methods and resources we use for heart failure patients every day. We should continue to speak among ourselves and to others about these advances. In that context, Congestive Heart Failure will continue to publish periodic focus issues like this. In an electronic age, we should be able to spread best practices liberally to those who provide the care; it is our pledge to be part of that dissemination of current knowledge.