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Topic Overview

Heart failure is a very serious illness that can cause life-threatening complications and significantly limit your life span. Fortunately, many drugs have been shown to slow the progression of heart failure, and several drugs have been shown to prolong survival. Each of these medicines has risks and benefits that you and your doctor will need to weigh when you are deciding whether you should take the medicine. These are summarized in the following table.

The decisions you make with your doctor should be tailored to meet your own personal goals of treatment for your heart failure. Some decisions are not always completely right or wrong. What is most important is that you make informed decisions that are right for you and with which you are comfortable.

In fact, your goals of treatment may change over time. Early in the course of your treatment, you may want to do everything possible to extend your life span, even if it means making your symptoms temporarily worse. A good example of this is starting therapy with a beta-blocker, which can make your symptoms worse during the first few weeks or months but eventually may reduce your symptoms and prolong your survival.

But if you develop end-stage heart failure with very severe symptoms that prevent you from doing even simple activities, you may prefer treatments that are most effective at reducing your symptoms, even if they may have some risk of decreasing your survival.

To help you with decision making, the most important things you can do are: first, keep yourself well informed about the risks and benefits of the treatments that are available to you, and second, develop a close rapport with a doctor whose advice and opinions you trust.