NZ led research on heart failure

[Bridgette]

This is an interesting article from the NZ Herald:

http://msn.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10594911&ref=rss


Bridgette

 

[Nancy]

Excellent article and excellent research study.

My husband lived for many, many years with heart failure. And he did have restrictive/constrictive heart failure.

He was on massive amounts of diuretics and they helped, but didn't eliminate the problem. It got better, then got worse again, then better, then worse. It seemed like each time he lost a tiny bit of ground. I kept him on a diet which had almost no salt or sodium, only enough to keep him relatively healthy. It was much lower than the Heart Assoc. recommends, way below 1000mg per day. That also helped, but he still had a terrible battle.

Eventually his kidneys just couldn't take it anymore, and he ended up on dialysis.

It will be interesting for me to see what treatments are finally developed to combat this problem.

It was clear to me that the current medications just didn't address that level of heart failure, and Joe was under the care of an expert in heart failure.

 

[escargome]

Like Nancy's husband, my mother was in congestive heart failure for more than 30 years. It was always a fine line for her to walk. Added to this was her type 2 diabetes. Between closely monitoring her weight, her sodium/fat/carbohydrate intake she lived until the age of 78. In the end, she caught a cold that filled her lungs with fluid and her heart and kidneys couldn't deal with everything at once, so she just went home to heaven. I will pray that this study finds a better way to treat patients with CHF. My mom was lucky in that she eventually found a PCP,Cardio, and Endocrinologist who turned out to be a wonderful team.

 

[Eva]

A very interesting and encouraging article. Let's hope they succeed in their path soon to be able to hep more patients with different causes for heart failure.

Thanks for sharing.