Meeting the Unmet Needs of Aging Heart Failure Patients: A Role for Palliative Care

Older patients with heart failure suffer from many symptoms. Many patients and their families not only face heart failure-related symptoms, but also financial burdens, side effects from medication and treatment, changes in their normal routine, difficult medical decisions, and limited social support. Palliative care aims to alleviate the pain and distress associated with illnesses and these difficulties, especially in the context of chronic and progressive illness. There have been strides to increase palliative care services for heart failure patients, but many barriers exist such as misconceptions about symptom burden, unpredictability of disease course and prognosis, and ambivalence of providers to discuss difficult topics with patients. Although there has been increased recognition of palliative care services, especially in heart failure, there still exists a paucity of implementation and research of these services for patients. There is a need for larger scale, randomized clinical trials for palliative care programs and systematic guidelines to further the implementation and efficacy of palliative care services for older patients with heart failure. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.