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♪ - [Dr. Trimbur]

Heart failure is a chronic condition in which the heart cannot, for some reason, supply enough blood to meet the needs of the body and the tissues in the body. It can be either a pumping problem, or a filling problem, or sometimes a combination of both. It's a chronic disease. There is no cure for it.

One of the first signs that you're picking up extra fluid in your body which is a cardinal sign of heart failure is when your weight jumps up rapidly. In heart failure, the heart is not able to do its job. The body interprets that as not enough volume in the body so you retain water and sodium, so then your weight goes up. The important thing for heart failure patients to do to take care of themselves are to take your medications as they're prescribed because those are very important to stop or slow down the progression of the disease.

It's very important for heart failure patients to watch the sodium in their diet. We want to restrict that to about 2 to 3 grams of sodium a day. Exercise. When the doctor has cleared you for exercise, it's important to be as physically active as you're able and to rest frequently when you need to.

Baptist Health Louisville, we spend a lot of time educating our patients. So, it's very important that patients learn to do what they can to take care of themselves. And then that way, we can optimize quality of life, and reduce the symptom burden, and sometimes we can either slow down or stop the progression of the disease. ♪ [music]

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Heart failure is a condition which heart muscle
does not provide enough circulation to the body,

does not deliver enough oxygen and other nutrients.

At the Heart Failure Clinic, we see patients
where we'll discharge from the hospital

after having an admission for heart failure.

When a patient comes to our
clinic, they first are examined,

then we look at their medications and decide what are
the medications that need to be changed or optimized.

There's been lots of studies that have shown that
if you do the titration of their medications,

optimally in a short period of time, their
outcome is better than doing it over longer

period of time.

Secondly, we also do what we
call education of the patient.

Patient needs to understand their condition.

Most patients don't, so we explain
to them what their condition is,

what are the things that they need to do,
what are the things that they should not do,

so that they understand their condition and act on it.

Because if you have buy-in from the patient, then
they are more likely to take their medications.

The most important thing to recognize is heart
failure diagnosis is occurring more and more often.

The prevalence of the disease is going up.

We are going to have a large group of
patients who need specialized care, so,

we are trying to do the best we can to
optimize their care, improve their lifestyle,

and possibly increase their lifespan.

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