NYMC Faculty Publications

End-of-Life Care in the Treatment of Heart Failure in Older Adults

DOI

10.1016/j.hfc.2017.02.014

Journal Title

Heart Failure Clinics

First Page

633

Last Page

644

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-1-2017

Department

Medicine

Abstract

Heart failure presents unique challenges to the clinician who desires to provide excellent and humane care near the end of life. Accurate prediction of mortality in the individual patient is complicated by a chronic disease that is punctuated by recurrent acute episodes and sudden death. Health care providers continue to have difficulty communicating effectively with terminally ill patients and their caregivers regarding end-of-life care preferences, all of which needs to occur earlier rather than later. This article also discusses various means of providing palliative care, and specific issues regarding device therapy, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and palliative sedation with concurrent discussion of the ethical ramifications and pitfalls of each.

Publisher's Statement

Originally published in Heart Failure Clinics. The original material can be found here.

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