Active clinical trials for "Heart Failure"

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the major clinical entities that causes thousands of deaths every year all over the world and weights a lot on the health care system of every country in terms of direct and indirect costs. The physiopathological modifications that characterise COPD are represented by irreversible (sometimes partially reversible) airflow obstruction, and bronchiolar inflammation. Lungs that develop emphysema lack of elastic recoil and imply increased resistances and airflow obstruction due to loss of lung parenchyma and supporting elastic structures. All these modifications produce air trapping and so lung hyperinflation. The latter is precisely the cause of the symptoms and particularly dyspnoea which is often heavily perceived by COPD patients and that drives to the limitation of daily activities. Lung hyperinflation and the other alterations that occur in COPD imply gas retention and increase in pulmonary vascular resistances. Considering that the rib cage has limited elastic properties, the effects of gas trapping and lung parenchymal damage on mediastinum and particularly on heart mechanics is indisputable. Together with alveolar hypoxia, lung hyperinflation is responsible for the development, as the disease progresses, of the cor pulmonale. Tha latter causes pulmonary hypertension and increased mechanic load during right heart chambers contraction and relaxation. Those alterations may effect left heart chambers too. Airflow obstruction in COPD is usually treated by inhaled bronchodilators and corticosteroids. The main and most used bronchodilators are represented by beta 2 agonists (short, long and ultra-long acting) and anticholinergic inhalatory drugs, which can be also short, long and ultra long acting. Among ultra long acting beta 2 agonists, indacaterol is characterised by quick onset of action (5 minutes), and guarantees an effective bronchodilation duration of 24 hours. It is also known that it has an important effect on reducing lung hyperinflation decreasing residual volume and consequently allowing an increase of inspiratory capacity. The purpose of our study is to evaluate the effects of indacaterol on lung hyperinflation in COPD subjects of any stage and with lung air trapping, and the consequent potential effects on heart performance evaluated by cardiac trans thoracic echo color doppler.

The aim of the present study is to evaluate differential lactate removal kinetics in heart failure patients that are trained according to 2 different exercise protocols: (A) High intensity intervals training (HIT); (B) Continuous moderate aerobic training (MAT)

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for one in every four deaths in 2010 and costing over $300 billion annually in health care, medication, and lost productivity. Heart failure (HF), a clinical syndrome that develops as a consequence of heart disease, is characterized by the worsening of symptoms, such as dyspnea and fatigue, upon exertion, collectively defined as "exercise intolerance". Surprisingly, exercise intolerance does not correlate with the degree of cardiac contractile (ventricular) dysfunction, suggesting that changes in the peripheral circulation may be to blame for exercise intolerance in this cohort. Though there are a host of factors that may contribute to this impairment, disease-related increases in circulating endothelin-1 (ET-1) may be a significant factor in the sequelae of exercise intolerance in HF. Thus, the overall purpose of this Small Projects in Rehabilitation Research (SPiRE) proposal is to explore the contribution of ET-1 to chronic vasoconstriction in HF patients, and to examine whether inhibition of this pathway could improve vasodilatory ability, and thus exercise tolerance, in Veterans with HF.

The long-term goal of this research is to determine whether a psychoeducational intervention will support self-care behaviors in Hispanic patients with heart failure. The specific goal of this study is to determine whether a culturally-appropriate psychoeducational intervention in Hispanic patients with heart failure, compared to a control group, will improve heart failure knowledge and self-care behaviors. We hypothesize that patients who receive the intervention will have improved heart failure self-care behaviors and depression scores as measured by the Self-Care Heart Failure Index and Patient Health Questionnaire.

The aims of the study are to: Implement a telemonitoring programme in heart failure and obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) /chronic respiratory patients by assessing the real world impact of on readmissions, consults, home visits, quality of life and economic endpoints. Explore the effects of telemonitoring across heart and respiratory groups with respect to i) factors that influence how patients integrate telemonitoring into their daily routines and self care behaviour and ii) how healthcare professionals use telemonitoring to aid decision- making. Understand the impact of telemonitoring on a variety of care pathways.

The aim of the study is to investigate whether a continuous interdisciplinary intervention improves medication adherence (primary efficacy endpoint) and leads to a reduction of hospitalizations and mortality (primary safety endpoint) in elderly patients with chronic heart failure. The intervention, consisting of regular contacts with the local pharmacy and weekly dosing aids, aims to improve medication adherence and management.

In the VIP (Veterans Intensive Personalized) Treatment in Heart Failure Study we will assess 2 novel interventions to enhance adherence and improve quality of life in veterans with heart failure. This 3-arm randomized controlled trial will base one active arm on how ready patients are for change in terms of diet and medication adherence and will tailor the intervention based on this. The other active arm will also assess how ready patients are for change, but will also include tailoring based on availability of environment resources, such as proximity to health food stores or social support, to further tailor the intervention. The last active arm is simply an attention group where patients will receive general health counseling in addition to background care that all patients receive. The overarching hypothesis is that the tailored interventions will lower heart failure (HF) recurrence and improve quality of life by better medication and diet adherence compared to attention placebo.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether Family Focused Nursing are effective in the treatment of heart failure outpatients with respect to health-related quality of life.

Heart failure (HF) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States with the incidence and prevalence of the disease on a continual rise. An overactive sympathetic nervous system has become a hallmark characteristic of HF. Although sympathetic activation is initially beneficial to maintain cardiac output, blood pressure and perfusion to vital organs, over the long term it becomes deleterious contributing to the worsening of HF and sudden cardiac death. Indeed, recent findings in HF patients suggest that the sympathetic overactivity is not just a marker of poor prognosis but it plays a causative role in the development of the disease. Thus, the sympathetic nervous system constitutes a putative drug target in the treatment of HF. However, despite aggressive medical management, including conventional anti-adrenergic strategies, sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) has been shown to remain abnormally high in HF patients and improvements in survival have been limited. Thus, other treatment strategies that include reducing SNA and its deleterious consequences are warranted. Recent findings from clinical trials indicate that 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl coenzyme A reductase inhibitors (statins) improve survival irrespective of cholesterol lowering bringing the pleiotropic (i.e., cholesterol independent) effects of statins to the forefront. An important pleiotropic effect recently reported in experimental HF, that has yet to be directly tested in human HF, is the ability of statins to reduce resting sympathetic outflow. Several studies in pacing-induced HF rabbits have demonstrated that statins normalize the excessive sympathetic activation in the HF state. Thus, the goal of this project is to determine whether these findings in experimental HF can be translated to the clinical setting of human HF. Our central hypothesis is that statins reduce sympathetic overactivity in HF patients. To test this hypothesis we will directly measure muscle SNA and perform a randomized crossover placebo control study. Subjects will come to the research laboratory before and after the administration of Simvastatin at a standard therapeutic dosage of 40 mg. per day or placebo for 1 month

People with heart failure often have weakness in their leg muscles. This study will determine whether the leg weakness is due to very high adrenaline levels and whether the medication clonidine can improve leg weakness.