title: Editor's Choice- Call to action: Initiation of multidisciplinary care for acute heart failure begins in the Emergency Department.
abstract: The Emergency Department is the first point of healthcare contact for most patients presenting with signs and symptoms of acute heart failure (AHF) and thus, plays a critical role in AHF management. Despite the increasing burden of AHF on healthcare systems in general and Emergency Departments in particular, there is little guidance for implementing care and disease management programmes. This has led to an urgent call for action to prioritize and improve the management of patients with AHF presenting to the Emergency Department. At a local level, hospitals are urged to develop and implement individual multidisciplinary AHF management programmes, which include detailed care pathways and the monitoring of management adherence, to ensure that care is based on the pathophysiology and causes of AHF. Multiple disciplines, including emergency medicine, hospital medicine, cardiology, nephrology and geriatrics, should provide input into the development of a multidisciplinary approach to AHF management in the ED and beyond, including in-hospital treatment, discharge and follow-up. This will ensure consensus of opinion and improve adherence. The benefits of standardized, multidisciplinary care have been shown in other areas of acute and chronic diseases and will also provide benefit for AHF patients presenting to Emergency Departments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine, Paracelsus Medical University, Nuremberg, Germany michael.christ@klinikum-nuernberg.de.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Christ
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiology, University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mueller
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence; D019468:Disease Management; D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000379:methods; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D018579:Patient Selection
keywords: AHF; Acute heart failure; ED; emergency department; multidisciplinary