Congestive Heart Failure Treatment

• Lifestyle changes: Certain lifestyle changes can improve your heart health and slow heart failure progression—or prevent it from occurring. These include quitting smoking, avoiding alcohol, eating a heart-healthy diet and exercising regularly.
• Cardiac rehabilitation: With cardiac rehab, licensed professionals help you strengthen your heart through personalized exercise and nutrition plans.
• Medications: Most people with heart failure take prescription medicines. Your doctor will pick the combination of drugs that is right for your individual needs and type of heart failure.
• Pacemakers and ICDs: When placed inside your chest, these small devices help your heartbeat normally or improve its pumping ability. For example, cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) uses a special pacemaker to help your heart’s bottom two chambers work together to pump blood more efficiently. And ICDs, also known as implantable cardioverter defibrillators, slow down heart rhythms that are dangerously fast.
• Heart surgery: If an underlying medical condition causes your heart failure, you might need heart surgery. For example, if heart valve disease weakens your heart’s pumping ability, we may be able to repair or replace your faulty valve. If a blocked coronary artery reduces blood flow to your heart, we can perform coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. We also offer a type of surgery called the modified DOR procedure. This removes scar tissue that can develop after a heart attack, interfering with blood flow.

With Stage D heart failure, also known as advanced heart failure, standard treatments no longer work.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re out of options. Emory Heart & Vascular offers advanced treatments that can improve your quality of life—and even extend your life:

• Ventricular assist device: This device, also known as a VAD, is a type of mechanical pump. When implanted in one of your ventricles (the bottom chambers of your heart), it helps your heart pump blood to the rest of your body.
• Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). With ECMO, blood pumps from your body into a machine, where it’s mixed with oxygen and pumped back into your body. The machine takes over for your heart and lungs, allowing them to rest.
• Heart transplant: For some people with advanced heart failure, heart transplant surgery is a lifesaving treatment option. During this procedure, a surgeon replaces your damaged heart with a healthy heart from a deceased donor.

Both VAD and ECMO can be “bridge-to-transplant” therapy. This means they help your heart function while you are on the heart transplant waiting list.

In some cases, VADs are “destination therapy.” This means the device will help your heart function for the rest of your life.

Treatment Emory Heart & Vascular has been at the forefront of advanced heart failure care for decades. For example:

• We performed Georgia’s first heart transplant in the 1980s. Since then, more than 1,000 people from across the Southeastern United States have turned to us for heart transplant surgery. In 2006, we were the first in the state to implant a ventricular assist device. Also known as a VAD, this treatment is an option for people with advanced heart failure who aren’t eligible for a heart transplant.
• We’ve earned Ventricular Assist Device certification from the Joint Commission. This distinction confirms we meet or exceed strict standards of care for VAD placement and management. Fewer than 100 hospitals and health systems in the U.S. have achieved (and maintained) this certification.
• We've implanted more than 500 durable, continuous flow Left Ventricular Assist Devices. In 2022, we implanted more HM 3 LVADs than any other program in the world.

Today, our heart failure experts continue to offer these life-changing and lifesaving treatments. They also conduct research that may lead to even more groundbreaking treatments.