LOS ANGELES (April 1, 2022) -- 

WHAT:
Today, the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, and the Heart Failure Society of America released updated guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of heart failure. This is the first full revision of the guidelines since 2013.

Heart failure, which is often confused with heart attack, is a condition in which the heart doesn’t stop beating, but can’t pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs.

WHO:
Michelle Kittleson, MD, PhD, director of Post-Graduate Education in Heart Failure and Transplantation and director of Heart Failure Research in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, is among the authors of the new guidelines and also wrote an editorial that appeared alongside the guidelines in the Journal of Cardiac Failure.

Kittleson can discuss the new guidelines, as well as strategies to help clinicians incorporate these recommendations into clinical practice. Among the guidelines, Kittleson can speak to new classifications of ejection fraction; new recommendations for optimizing medical therapy for heart failure, including use of the sodium glucose transporter 2 inhibitors; and a section urging clinicians to be on the lookout for cardiac amyloidosis, which is underrecognized in heart failure patients and now has a treatment approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

WHY:
About 6.2 million adults in the U.S. have heart failure, and these guidelines offer clinicians the most up-to-date recommendations for treating them.

“The mountain of scientific evidence in the field of cardiology is daunting, and clinicans can’t comb through all of it each time they treat a patient,” Kittleson said. “These guidelines provide a clear basis for every recommendation, and when a clinician consults the guidelines, they can see how strongly the experts are recommending each strategy and what type of scientific evidence they based that decision on.”

Kittleson also recommends that heart failure patients ask their cardiologists: “Am I on the best possible medication regimen as recommended by the heart failure guidelines?”

FOLLOW:
@CedarsSinai, @MKIttlesonMD, #kittlesonrules on Twitter. 

WHERE:
Cedars-Sinai can accommodate most virtual interview formats, including Zoom, FaceTime and Skype.

CONTACT:
Cara Martinez can help schedule your interview: 310-562-7821 or [email protected].