A Comparative Analysis on Treatments Available For Heart Failure Patients - Research Proposal Example

In the US alone, the rates of patients that seek medical help for treatment of heart failure increased from 1.7 million to 2.9 million annually (Jessup and Loh, 2003). Substantial disturbance of pumping enough oxygenated blood throughout the body can gravely affect the health of a person and may even be the cause of slow death of organs and eventually the body. In order to assess whether or not a patient has heart failure, assessment via echocardiogram (ECG), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as well as x-rays may be used, along with the use of certain biochemical tests (Abraham and Krum, 2007).

Upon verification of disease, treatment may ensue, depending on the severity of the disease. These can be either or both the use of pacemakers as well as pharmacological agents to treat the symptoms of heart disease in patients (Timperley et al., 2008). Today there are many pacemakers available for heart failure patients, which can either be temporary or permanent, operates on just one chamber or two chambers of the heart, and can be implanted inside the abdomen or is just placed outside the chest, over the heart (Maisel, 2010).

With its invention in the 1950’s, as a device that could help the heart pump out blood as much as what is needed, patients with heart failure were given an increased life span (Timperley et al., 2008). . Due to the high costs of implanted medical devices, many patients still resort in using pharmacologic treatment of heart failure, which is mostly the usage of drugs such as digoxin, beta-blockers and ACE that affect the dilation of major blood vessels as well as minimizing or preventing heart arrhythmia in patients with heart failure (Feldman, 2006).

Combinations of drugs are usually employed in treating heart failure. This is mainly to alleviate the side-effects of one or more drugs, as well as to prevent fluid retention in the body (Jessup and Loh, 2003). Though the use of drugs and pacemakers may have increased the lifespan of some heart failure patients, it can’t be denied that the costs of treatment as well as maintenance can be high. If the disease is already severe, treatment may only extend the life of patients as well as alleviate the symptoms being experienced, but eventually there would still be deterioration of the patient’s heart in the long term (Jessup and Loh, 2003).

Maisel (2010) also mentions that depending on the severity of the patient’s disease, either drugs or I-CRT would work well alone. Depending on the clinical trials being given, it can be expected that in order to see any improvement in the implementation of such treatments, the benefit should outweigh the risk. If the disease is mild, the use of medicine to alleviate the symptoms should suffice. However, with patients that have severe symptoms, the use of pacemakers could only help increase their lifespan substantially (Maisel, 2010).

More often than not, the use of drugs alone with patients that have severe chronic heart failure would cause eventual heart failure due to sudden death (Feldman, 2006). Also, there is a decreased novelty in the use of