Heart failure is a serious, pervasive and costly problem which affects more than five million people every year and is the most common reason people are readmitted to the hospital. Treating patients with advanced heart failure can pose especially difficult challenges for the front-line health care professional.

The Health Center’s second annual heart failure symposium held March 28 was specifically designed to address the complicated disease management issues that surround these advanced cases. The event attracted 265 health care professionals including nurses, social workers, physical and occupational therapists, and dietitians.

“Last year’s symposium was geared toward newly diagnosed heart failure patients,” said registered nurse Wendy Martinson, quality assurance specialist at the Health Center and one of the organizers of the symposium. “This year we wanted to focus on the huge number of patients with advanced heart failure, who have a whole different set of issues. When looking at reasons why patients come back into the hospital, we noticed there is a gap in trying to bridge the sicker patient over to advanced therapies to palliative care to hospice.”

“A lot of the people here see the heart failure patients every day,” said Dr. Jason Ryan, co-director of the UConn Heart Failure Center and one of the symposium’s speakers. “They have the opportunity to educate them, to spot problems early and get them to their doctors so to get everyone here to understand what the heart failure patient’s challenges are is really important.”

Other symposium speakers addressed the essentials of heart failure disease management including medications, nutrition, palliation of heart failure care, patient and interdisciplinary communication practices, and staff “self-care musts.”

Another serious concern for advanced heart failure patients is the risk of developing a life-threatening arrhythmia. Devices such as an implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD) can reduce their risk of dying.

Dr. Christopher Pickett, co-director of the UConn Heart Rhythm Program, talked about ICD’s and cardiac resynchronization therapy. “There is a subset of patients with advanced heart failure who despite being on the best possible medicines will have severe symptoms of heart failure, and there is a pacing device we can use, along with a defibrillator or a pacemaker that can significantly reduce the symptoms of heart failure.”

Pickett said within the last 20 years the number of these devices greatly increased but that has changed recently. “Ironically, thanks to improved catheter and stenting procedures and better medicines, more patients are getting better treatment for their heart attacks and they’re not having the advanced heart failure symptoms they might have been having  a few years ago,” explained Pickett.

Whether with advanced treatments like cardiac devices or good old-fashioned outpatient care, heart failure patients can live longer with a better quality of life.

“Nurses are the ones who spend the majority of the time with the patients,” said Martinson. “They are going to be the first ones to pick-up on any changes so it’s important for them to know how to handle the specific challenges that these advanced cases present; hopefully this symposium accomplished that.”

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