Advice urges wider sharing of heart care decisions

A heart device might save your life but leave you miserable. That awful possibility is the reason for new advice urging doctors to talk more honestly with people who have very weak hearts and are considering pumps, pacemakers, new valves or procedures to open clogged arteries.

Studies: Drug, device help treat heart failure

Millions of people with mild or moderate heart failure got good news Sunday, with studies showing a Pfizer drug and a device from Medtronic can boost survival and cut trips to the hospital by patients having trouble breathing.

Study: Heart failure drug guidelines often ignored

Most hospitalized heart failure patients are sent home without widely recommended inexpensive pills, despite a program to get more doctors to follow treatment guidelines, a study suggests.

Exercise no magic cure for heart failure patients

Exercise can do a lot of good for most people, but it apparently isn't much help to those with heart failure, the fastest-growing heart problem in the United States.

When Stevie Caffrey collapsed only days after giving birth, doctors warned she would die without a heart transplant.

Conservative blogger and commentator Andrew Breitbart died of heart failure stemming from coronary artery disease, Los Angeles County coroner’s office officials said. The 43-year-old collapsed as he was walking his dog near his Brentwood home and died on March 1. Breit …

Dick Cheney has just joined a list of high-profile people, including Steve Jobs, Mickey Mantle, Evil Knievel and David Crosby who, received a transplant and thereby created a controversy. Cheneyreceived a heart on Friday from an anonymous donor at Inova Fairfax Hospital in …

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was recovering Saturday at a hospital in Falls Church, Va., after undergoing a heart transplant, NBC News reported. Cheney was in the Intensive Care Unit of Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, his office said in a statement. The form …

When 46-year-old Tammy Lumpkins showed up at Keck Hospital of USC in August, she needed a new heart.Her doctors got her onto the transplant list, but as she waited, her health deteriorated.

AFTER slowing down in the first half of the year, the rate of homes entering foreclosure is rising again. First-time default notices were served on 78,000 homes in August, a 33 percent increase from July.

TAMPA - Russell Horner worked for the FBI in Tampa for more than 30 years. But after retiring, the 65-year-old didn't slow down, taking a job as a loss prevention agent at the Target on West Hillsborough Avenue.

The Veterans Health Administration, the largest integrated health care system in the country, has long employed many of the approaches Medicare is pushing on all hospitals to reduce unnecessary readmissions.

The researchers at University College London looked at a group of cells which are able to transform into different types of heart tissue in an embryo. In adults epicardium-derived progenitor cells line the heart, but have become dormant. Scientists used a chemical, thymosin bet …

More than 1 in 5 patients who receive an implantable defibrillator to prevent sudden death fall outside guidelines for the use of such devices and have about three times the risk of dying while hospitalized for the procedure as those who receive it within the guidelines, research …

Heart failure death occurred two to three times more often in people with vitamin D insufficiency or deficiency compared with those who had normal levels of the vitamin, according to data from a government survey.

The first knee-jerk response to the Great Dick Cheney Empathy Test (GDCET) is, of course, the easiest, and the most obvious, the most available to your giddy puppydog consciousness, and my guess is it shot through you like a fast and wonderful lightning bolt of OH MY SWEET JESUS  …

He's had five heart attacks, and could soon seek a transplant. Dr. Kent Sepkowitz on the extraordinary history of Dick's ticker—and how government health care keeps him alive. How much it costs us.

The device, made of both synthetic and animal tissue, is driven by two miniature electric motors. Implanted in the patient's chest after the diseased heart is removed, it uses information gleaned from sensors to mimic the activity of the natural organ.

Call Jenny Masche the Marathon Woman. Only a year after her dangerous delivery of sextuplets, she ran a 26.2-mile race. "I hit walls taking care of them sometimes," she admitted, "but there's something exhilarating on the other side."

Hundreds of people taking Avandia, a controversial diabetes medicine, needlessly suffer heart attacks and heart failure each month, according to confidential government reports that recommend the drug be removed from the market.

Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital have developed the first mathematical model in cardiology and emergency medicine to more quickly and reliably diagnose acute heart failure (AHF) in emergency room patients.

A study just published on bmj.com reports that rosiglitazone, a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes, is linked with an increased risk of heart failure and death among elder patients compared to pioglitazone, which is a similar drug.

An autopsy in Florida shows television pitchman Billy Mays died from heart-related problems, not head trauma.

Depression in CHF patients is a powerful predictor of morbidity and mortality. Meditation is shown to be a sustained and clinically significant nonpharmacologic intervention.

About 1 percent of the heart muscle cells are replaced every year at age 25, and that rate gradually falls to less than half a percent per year by age 75, concluded a team of researchers led by Dr. Jonas Frisen of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Implanting a device soon after a heart attack can reduce a patient's risk of sudden death in the days following initial treatment, a study sponsored by Medtronic Inc found.

Her last hope...gone.

February 27: I knew when I walked into the ICU that the night would be a busy one. I was not scheduled to work this eve, but I volunteered to come back because my colleagues were short-staffed.

A South American bug known for carrying a deadly disease has made its way to South Texas, according to health experts.

BALTIMORE, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- Heart failure is the leading cause of death among patients on dialysis for failing kidneys, say researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.