Complex Care Options for Patients With Advanced Heart Failure Approaching End of Life

Abstract

Care for patients with advanced cardiac disease continues to evolve in a complex milieu of therapeutic options, advanced technological interventions, and efforts at improving patient-centered care and shared decision-making. Despite improvements in quality of life and survival with these interventions, optimal supportive care across the advanced illness trajectory remains diverse and heterogeneous. Herein, we outline challenges in prognostication, communication, and caregiving in advanced heart failure and review the unique needs of patients who experience frequent hospitalizations, require chronic home inotropic support, and who have implantable cardioverter-defibrillators and mechanical circulatory support in situ, to name a few.

Keywords: Advance care planning; Caregiver; End of life; Heart failure; Inotropes; Mechanical circulatory support; Palliative care; Ventricular assist device.