Knowing he needed a new heart, Robert Montgomery, MD, saw an opportunity to practice what he preaches. So, the 58-year-old director of NYU Langone Health’s Transplant Institute accepted an organ from a heroin user who died of a drug overdose and had hepatitis C.

Active cocaine users with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) benefited from beta-blocker therapy in a recent study, seeing improved left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and reduced rates of cocaine-related CV events despite long-standing worries that the treatment might exacerbate symptoms of HF.

The nature of caregiving means the caregiver-patient relationship is always changing, but continued support from a network of experts and dedication to mutuality and preparedness can ensure both patients and caregivers have a good quality of life (QoL), according to a study published Jan. 14 in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

Tafamidis, Pfizer’s treatment for transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM), has been granted a priority review designation from the FDA, potentially speeding its path to approval.

Although childhood cancer survival has improved markedly over the past few decades, a new study out of the Netherlands suggests a greater proportion of those survivors are at risk of developing heart failure at young ages, due in part to cardiotoxic treatments.

A tool designed to assess the psychosocial status of heart transplant candidates may also be able to predict which left ventricular assist device (LVAD) recipients are at the highest risk of being readmitted to the hospital, Cleveland Clinic researchers reported Jan. 9 in Circulation: Heart Failure.

Women with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) live longer than their male counterparts, but those additional years are plagued by a lower quality of life—including greater levels of self-reported anxiety, depression and physical disability—according to an analysis in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.