Heart Failure Disease Prevention in Corbin, KY
Pramod Reddy, MD, Cardiology
Baptist Health Corbin
Pramod Reddy, MD:
Heart failure is a very complex clinical syndrome due to either deficiency, the failing of the heart or stiffening of the heart not being able to fill adequately, or due to weakness of the heart muscle, resulting in decreased pumping of the heart.
Heart failure can certainly be prevented because it is caused most commonly by certain conditions. Patients can make lifestyle changes to control their blood pressure, control their diabetes if they're diabetic, do regular exercise, and control all the risk factors for coronary heart disease, like smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol.
Once they get into heart failure, they have to be under the care of a provider where they're treated according to guideline-directed medical therapy. Patients who present with acute heart failure are treated in the hospital setting with aggressive IV diuretic therapy. Once they are stabilized, they go to a heart failure clinic where they are closely followed to make sure they continue to remain stable and they are following all the recommendations appropriately.
There's a misconception about heart failure that it's a heart attack and it's a death sentence. It's not a terminal condition. It's a condition that can be treated very well and treated appropriately with all the advances that we have made in research on heart failure. We’ve got excellent drugs that will make the patient live a long, high-quality life.
