NIH Radio
NIH Senior Health Website Features Heart Failure Information
Brief Description:
Roughly 5 million older Americans are affected by heart failure and the number is growing. That in itself is a good reason to check out the featured topic about heart failure on the website NIHSeniorHealth.gov.
Transcript:
Akinso: Roughly 5 million older Americans are affected by heart failure and the number is growing. That in itself is a good reason to check out the featured topic about heart failure on the website NIHSeniorHealth.gov. There you'll find information about prevention, detection, and treatment of heart failure. Dr. Daniel Levy, a Medical Officer at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute discusses the impact that heart failure has on the elderly.
Levy: An important issue is that we're seeing many cases of heart failure emerge in older people. Years back many people who suffered heart attacks would have died from those heart attacks. And now we're getting so much better at treating people coming into the hospital and the emergency room with a heart attack that we're keeping them alive longer and they're being kept alive with damaged heart muscle. So many people today with heart failure are around because we salvaged heart muscle in people with heart attacks and for that reason we're seeing, if you will, a new epidemic of heart failure due to the successes we've had in treating and saving lives of people who've had heart attacks.
Akinso: Dr. Levy says heart failure tends to be more common in men than in women, but because women usually live longer, the condition affects more women in their 70s and 80s. The website was jointly developed by the National Institute on Aging and the National Library of Medicine for older adults and their families. Once again the website is NIHSeniorHealth.gov. This is Wally Akinso at the National Institutes of Health Bethesda, Maryland.
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