title: Clinical findings, natriuretic peptides, and echocardiography: integrating tools to optimize heart failure management.
abstract: The hemodynamic profile of heart failure (HF) patients may be critical to their clinical outcome, whereby congestion emerges as a particularly important aspect to define therapeutic goals, optimize HF treatment, and determine prognosis. Accordingly, individualized HF management must include several strategies to detect congestion, which might easily be underestimated in chronic HF patients. Therefore, it is important to recognize the true reliability of traditional HF signs and symptoms. The contemporary understanding of HF has brought new value to some aspects of physical examination. Natriuretic peptides have emerged as potential new tools in the diagnosis of congestion in patients with HF, and echocardiography has gained renewed importance in HF management when it is used to investigate hemodynamic profile. The aim of this article is to review and integrate these 3 ways of assessing and monitoring HF patients: clinical findings, natriuretic peptides, and echocardiography.
authors.affiliation: Heart Failure and Transplant Unit of Cardiovascular Division, Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Beck-da-Silva
authors.forename: Luis E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Rohde
authors.forename: Livia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Goldraich
authors.forename: Nadine
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Clausell
mesh_terms: D015415:Biomarkers / Q000097:blood; D004452:Echocardiography; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000097:blood / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D020097:Natriuretic Peptide, Brain / Q000097:blood; D045265:Natriuretic Peptides / Q000097:blood*
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; D045265:Natriuretic Peptides; D020097:Natriuretic Peptide, Brain