AHA issues guidance on treating heart failure with reduced ejection fraction

The American Heart Association (AHA) recently released an expert consensus decision pathway aimed at optimizing care for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.

The pathway provides practical tips, tables, and figures to help physicians provide optimal care to patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction. It covers these 10 topics:

• Initiating, adding, or switching therapy to new evidence-based guideline-directed treatments for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction;
• Achieving optimal therapy given multiple drugs for heart failure;
• Timing of referral to a heart failure specialist;
• Addressing challenges of care coordination;
• Improving adherence;
• Determining the needs of specific patient cohorts, such as African-Americans and older adults;
• Managing patients' cost of care;
• Managing the increasing complexity of heart failure;
• Managing common comorbid conditions; and
• Integrating palliative care and transition to hospice care.

The decision pathway was published online Dec. 22 and is available free of charge.