While rehospitalization rates among heart failure patients are high, the potential solutions to lower these rates aren't that complex, says Michael Miller, MD.
Dr. Miller is a professor of cardiovascular medicine, epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. He recently joined Becker's cardiology podcast to discuss the specialty's top challenges today, emerging treatment options for heart patients and more.
Here is an excerpt from the podcast. Click here to download the full episode.
Editor's note: This response was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: How do you see heart care evolving over the next 18 months?
Dr. Michael Miller: We have heart failure with reduced ejection fraction and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, and we're looking at about 6 million adults in the United States, probably equally distributed between these two groupings.
We know that there are high rates of rehospitalization and deaths in these groups of patients. So it's really important to try to see what can be done to reduce the risk of hospitalizations because we have patients that are coming into our intensive coronary care units or our step-down units that are re-presenting for a variety of reasons
Among the most common [reasons] include some issues related to noncompliance — whether it's diet or medical non-compliance. But if we can foster education as it relates to being compliant with the diet and sodium restriction and being compliant with medicines, there's no reason why we cannot improve these rates. We have great medicines that are available.