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Keynote address outlines advances in HF management

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LOS ANGELES — Advances in the treatment of HF are necessary to improve patient outcomes, according to Nancy M. Albert, PhD, CCNS, CHFN, CCRN, NE-BC, FAHA, FCM, associate chief nursing officer and clinical nurse specialist, Cleveland Clinic, who delivered the Keynote Address at the American Association of Heart Failure Nurses Annual Conference.

Albert discussed the evolution of HF management, with a focus on advances in medication management and cardiac device therapies. She analyzed recent studies and literature reviews of HF treatments and medications, including the treatment of congestion, loop diuretics, vasopressin receptor antagonists, anemia treatments and HF with preserved ejection fraction, and concluded that progress for improving management of HF is moving slowly, especially with the development of new medications.

“We are standing still with a lot of the drugs that we are using,” Albert said.

Albert also discussed serelaxin (Novartis), an investigational medication that is the recombinant form of human relaxin-2. Although serelaxin has not yet been approved by the FDA, she noted, it has been shown in clinical trials to improve mortality rates at 6 months after initial hospitalization among patients with HF.

“There’s something about serelaxin that’s going on early,” she said. “You give it once, and because we’re actually changing the morphology of what’s going on in the heart and the cardiac system and with the neuroendocrine system, it’s having long-lasting effects. So this is a very exciting, although not FDA-approved, finding for us, that hopefully will give us something to look forward to, because we have zero new drugs for acute decompensated heart failure in the last 10 years that really show an improvement in clinical outcomes.”

For more information:

Albert NM. Keynote Address: 10 Years of Advances in HF Management: Are We Moving Forward or Standing Still? Presented at: the American Association of Heart Failure Nurses Annual Conference; June 26-28, 2014; Los Angeles.

Disclosure: Albert reports no relevant financial disclosures.