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Medical Management of Patients With Continuous-Flow Left Ventricular Assist Devices

  • Heart Failure (W Tang, Section Editor)
  • Published:
Current Treatment Options in Cardiovascular Medicine Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Opinion statement

The prevalence of patients living with advanced heart failure continues to rise. For a subset of these patients, continuous-flow left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) are a life-saving therapy. Given the efficacy and durability of contemporary LVAD devices, their use has increased exponentially in recent years. The medical management of patients with an LVAD is an area of expertise for advanced heart failure clinicians, but a general understanding of the initial approach to, and stabilization of, LVAD patients is an important skillset for many health care providers. The rapidly changing field of the medical management of LVAD patients is largely based on clinical experience and limited published data. In this manuscript, we integrate the available published data on the medical management of LVAD patients with the growing clinical experience.

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Conflict of Interest

Dr. Adam D. DeVore declares no potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article.

Dr. Robert J. Mentz served as a consultant for HeartWare and had travel/accommodations expenses covered or reimbursed by Thoratec.

Dr. Chetan B. Patel served as a consultant for and had travel/accommodations expenses covered or reimbursed by HeartWare. Dr. Patel had travel/accommodations expenses covered or reimbursed by Thoratec.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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  1. Division of Cardiology, Duke University Medical Center, 2301 Erwin Road, DUMC 3845, Durham, NC, 27710, USA

    Adam D. DeVore MD, Robert J. Mentz MD & Chetan B. Patel MD

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  1. Adam D. DeVore MD
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  2. Robert J. Mentz MD
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  3. Chetan B. Patel MD
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Correspondence to Adam D. DeVore MD.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Heart Failure

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DeVore, A.D., Mentz, R.J. & Patel, C.B. Medical Management of Patients With Continuous-Flow Left Ventricular Assist Devices. Curr Treat Options Cardio Med 16, 283 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11936-013-0283-0

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