Advanced Heart Failure Management Center

Heart Failure Experts, Right Here

At St. Elizabeth Advanced Heart Failure Management Center, we have assembled an entire team of experts to help patients with heart failure. If you have a diagnosis of heart failure, sometimes called congestive heart failure, you can be assured that there are a number of things you can do to manage this chronic illness and live a full life. Our experts have the experience and the tools to help you do just that.

What is Heart Failure?

Your heart is a muscle that pumps blood to all parts of your body. Heart failure means that your body may not be getting all the blood or oxygen it needs to function properly. A weakness of the heart muscle may lead to decreased pump power and less blood being supplied to your body. It does not mean that your heart has stopped working. Although it may sound frightening, heart failure is usually a chronic condition treated with medications and your symptoms can be managed. Often the power of the heart can improve with specific medical management alone.

Common conditions we treat:

We offer some of the most comprehensive heart failure care in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Our heart failure team has vast experience treating some of the most complex heart failure patients. Our team includes:

By seeing a heart failure specialist at the Advanced Heart Failure Management Center early in your heart failure diagnosis, you will benefit from our multidisciplinary team that will carefully monitor the progression of your health status. This also allows us to provide education to you and your support network regarding lifestyle modifications, medications, and available treatment options. We’ve found it takes a team effort to live well with heart failure. That is why we partner with you and your support network to provide you comprehensive care in our Advanced Heart Failure Management Center.

Types of heart failure include right-sided heart failure and left-sided heart failure, systolic heart failure and diastolic heart failure. Your ejection fraction – the amount of blood your heart pushes out with each heartbeat – plays a role in your treatment path. Depending on your type of heart failure, treatments might include medications, implanted devices or surgery. We also offer services such as nutritional and palliative care consults and outpatient intravenous infusions, as well as referrals for cardiac rehabilitation.

The Advanced Heart Failure Management Center offers medical care, support, education, medical care coordination, and a range of other services to help you manage your condition to regain the best quality of life possible. Our doctors are all fellowship trained in heart failure management. They work alongside nurses and nurse practitioners experienced in caring for people with heart failure. With a nurse navigator to help coordinate services, including follow-up care, we are right here to assist you every step of the way.

A VAD is a heart pump that is surgically implanted inside the left ventricle of your heart to assist in pumping enough blood to the rest of your body. The heart pump can provide improvement in symptoms if you have heart failure that has not responded to medical management.

For some patients, despite taking all your medications and seeing your doctor regularly, a higher level of support is needed. A more permanent, long-term solution may need to be considered, including a VAD, heart transplant, or palliative care.

The St. Elizabeth VAD Program brings together a multidisciplinary team that supports patients who require a ventricular assist device to keep their heart pumping effectively. This team of heart failure cardiologists, cardiothoracic surgeons, nurse coordinators, social workers, nutritionists, pharmacists, and palliative care specialists work together with each patient to provide comprehensive and individualized care.

If heart transplant is a treatment option, our VAD team works closely with other local heart transplant programs and will assist in coordinating that care with you.

St. Elizabeth Healthcare received credentialing from DNV as a Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) Facility, affirming the hospital’s readiness to provide the full spectrum of VAD Program services – diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and patient and community education – as well as clear metrics to evaluate program outcomes. For more information about DNV, visit https://www.dnv.us/supplychain/healthcare/vad/

Additional Information about Heart Failure

Phone Apps

Find on Google Play or Apple App Store