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While all types of cardiomyopathy can cause heart failure, each case requires specific strategies for recovery. Heart failure is treated with a vigorous blend of patient education, dietary changes, and medications.
Possible medications include:
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Positive inotropic agents: These chemicals help the heart contract. The main agent of this category is digoxin. In-hospital options include dopamine, dobutamine, and milrinone.
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Diuretics: Often called "water pills," diuretics help relieve the fluid overloads in heart failure.
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Vasodilators: These drugs dilate blood vessels at several levels in the body, reducing the workload for the heart.
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ACE-inhibitors and Beta blockers: These treatments act as vasodilators while helping to preserve the normal architecture of the heart muscle
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Other drugs: Angiotensin II receptor blockers, antiarrhythmic drugs, and blood thinners.
In some individuals with severely weak pumping function of the heart and severe heart failure, a special pacemaker, called a biventricular pacemaker, may be needed. It makes the contraction of the left and right bottom chambers (ventricles) more efficient. In very specific cases, biventricular pacemakers with defibrillation functions are used.
In severe cases, surgical procedures, which can be implemented to sustain life until a transplant donor becomes available, can help but do not cure the disease. They include:
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Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD): Treatment provides mechanical circulatory support.
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Dynamic Cardiomyoplasty: A procedure in which a skeletal-muscle flap, created from a patient's thoracic (chest) muscle, is trained to contract often and "wrapped around" the heart to help it contract.
Advanced, severe heart failure requires heart transplant.
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