How is heart failure treated?

Your treatment plan depends on your specific medical history. The goal of treatment is to relieve some of your symptoms and to help reduce the work your heart has to perform with each heartbeat. This helps to make your heart pump more efficiently.

The focus of your treatment includes lifestyle and dietary changes, exercise, important medications, and, sometimes, special implanted devices to help the heart. It is also important to treat any other associated medical condition that may be affecting your heart. This may include fixing blocked coronary arteries, repairing damaged heart valves, or correcting abnormal heart rhythms.

Your doctor will instruct you to carefully restrict the salt (sodium chloride) in your diet. A high-salt diet can increase your blood pressure but, more importantly, can cause your body to retain water. This can cause swelling and worsened symptoms. Changing what you eat and drink can help prevent fluid from backing up in your body.

Monitoring your health and weighing yourself daily is also an excellent way to stay healthy. Any rapid weight gain can be a sign that you are retaining water and may mean that your treatment plan may need to be adjusted. You should weigh yourself at the same time every morning with the same scale. Write your weight down each day, and call your doctor if you gain more than 3 pounds in one day or if you gain more than 5 pounds in a week. The dosage of your medications may need to be adjusted.

Your heart failure symptoms will improve if you stay as physically active as possible. Aerobic activities, such as walking, can help by exercising the heart and may allow it to get stronger. When you stay active, you may feel less tired and have fewer symptoms. It is a good idea to have a regular exercise schedule. By exercising regularly and keeping your body conditioned, you will feel better and can exercise longer.

Although it is important to stay active, your body also needs rest. Regular periods of both rest and exercise should be scheduled into your day. If you listen to your body, you will know when it needs rest or activity.

Medications are an essential component of your heart failure treatment. Certain medications can help you live longer by improving the way your heart pumps over time. Other medications can relieve symptoms and improve your quality of life (Table 5). It may be necessary to make frequent adjustments to these medications to find the combination of medications that works best for your condition.

Additionally, your heart failure may require the implantation of special devices, such as an implanted cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) or a biventricular pacemaker. In very rare cases a patient who has severe heart failure may need to have a special heart pump implanted, known as a ventricular assist device (VAD). These devices are addressed in the following sections.