Ethical issues in heart failure: overview of an emerging need.
Modern therapies in cardiovascular medicine aim at preventing death and improving patients' quality of life. However, cardiologists often focus on what can be done rather than what should be done, and the latter consideration may be neglected in the midst of therapeutic optimism. The life-saving success of cardiovascular treatments, combined with an aging population, has created an epidemic of heart failure, a disease that portends considerable morbidity and mortality and raises important questions about what should be done. This and the following essays in this section address the emerging need for ethical analysis of issues raised by patients with heart failure. In this overview, we discuss end-of-life care in end-stage heart failure, new therapies for heart failure, and heart failure research.
Department of Mdicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. jkirkpat@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu
James N
JN
Kirkpatrick
Antony Y
AY
Kim
D002309:Cardiology / Q000941:ethics*; D002908:Chronic Disease; D018450:Disease Progression; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000941:ethics; D011788:Quality of Life; D013727:Terminal Care / Q000941:ethics; D014481:United States