Acute and Chronic Heart Failure

Heart failure (HF) is a complex clinical syndrome characterized by the heart's inability to pump a sufficient amount of blood to meet the body's metabolic demands, or by its ability to do so only at the cost of significantly elevated ventricular filling pressures. HF represents the final common pathway for most cardiovascular diseases (ischemic heart disease, systemic and pulmonary arterial hypertension, valvular heart disease, cardiomyopathies, and metabolic heart diseases). It is a symptomatic and highly debilitating condition that significantly impairs the affected individual's quality of life. Furthermore, it is the leading cause of hospital admissions among the population aged 65 years and older, resulting—among other consequences—in a substantial increase in national healthcare expenditure. Moreover, despite advances in HF prevention and treatment, the condition remains a major cause of death. For these reasons, we consider HF to be an extremely timely and broad topic, and this Reprint to be highly relevant and significant.