Treatment
Years ago the statistic was that the majority of patients, particularly those over 13 (if passed on genetically and has taken place earlier in life) and over 55 years of age, died within 3 years of the onset of symptoms (stage 5 of CHF) – and such figures can still be found in many textbooks. The situation has improved dramatically in recent years with drug therapy that can slow down progression and in some cases even improve the heart condition. Death is due to either congestive heart failure or ventricular tachy- or bradyarrhythmias.
Patients are given the standard therapy for heart failure, typically including salt restriction, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, diuretics, and digitalis. Anticoagulants may also be used. Alcohol should be avoided. Artificial pacemakers may be used in patients with intraventricular conduction delay, and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators in those at risk of arrhythmia. These forms of treatment have been shown to improve symptoms and reduce hospitalization.
In patients with advanced disease who are refractory to medical therapy, heart transplantation may be considered.
Read more about this topic: Dilated Cardiomyopathy
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“[17th-century] Puritans were the first modern parents. Like many of us, they looked on their treatment of children as a test of their own self-control. Their goal was not to simply to ensure the child’s duty to the family, but to help him or her make personal, individual commitments. They were the first authors to state that children must obey God rather than parents, in case of a clear conflict.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“If the study of all these sciences, which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)