The Year in Cardiology 2013: heart failure

Heart failure has become a worldwide epidemic of the 21st century with increasing impact on healthcare systems. The 2012 ESC and 2013 ACCF/AHA guidelines have set the stage for current therapy to reduce mortality and morbidity. There is a dawn of hope for therapy of acute and diastolic heart failure; it has become clearer that patients benefit from mitral reconstruction and which patients benefit from heart failure management programmes; genetics and proteomics advance in great strides; competing concepts of cell therapy seem to spiral, hopefully upwards; and we can further nurture our hope for evidence-based individualized diagnostic and therap

The year in cardiology: heart failure 2014

The year 2014 has become a remarkable year for heart failure. A bad start was caused by the publication of TOPCAT, showing that spironolactone did not prove to be beneficial for the treatment of patients with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Nevertheless, further insights in the study yields a few bright spots, and treatment with spironolactone might still be considered in patients with HFpEF. In acute heart failure, additional data were published on the effects of serelaxin. Serelaxin reduced wedge pressures, had similar effects in acute heart failure patients with and without a reduced ejection fraction, and had a neutral effect on diuretic response. But the most important news was related to the results of PARADIGM, where LCZ696, the first-in-class angiotensin-receptor neprilysin inhibitor, proved to be superior to enalapril in reducing mortality and morbidity in patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF