Heart failure: from advanced disease to bereavement From Advanced Disease to Bereavement Oxford Specialist Handbooks in End of Life Care Series

Excellent end of life care for people with heart failure is challenging but possible. Failure to address this aspect of care has serious consequences for patients, their families, clinicians and the use of health resources. Heart Failure: From Advanced Disease to Bereavement illustrates the complexity and importance of end of life care for patients with advanced heart failure. This book is a pocket reference for everyday use in the clinic, ward or home visit for all doctors, nurses and AHPs caring for people with advanced heart failure. It outlines the underlying pathophysiology of heart failure, summarises standard pharmacological and device therapy, and sets the context of the challenges resulting from an unpredictable course of disease. In easily digestible summaries, this book presents practical advice about how and when to integrate a palliative care approach alongside standard heart failure management, how to communicate honestly in the face of uncertainty, the rationalisation of medication and device therapies at the end of life, symptom control, care for the dying, and care after death.

1. The challenge of patients with heart failure: barriers in accessing supportive and palliative care. 2. The physiology of patients with heart failure: the origin of symptoms and rationale for treatment. 3. Prognostication and disease trajectory. 4. Communication in heart failure. 5. Diagnosing end stage heart disease. 6. Integrating supportive and palliative care. 7. Optimising management in end stage heart failure. 8. Advance care planning. 9. Management of pain. 10. Symptoms other than pain. 11. Psychological and psychosocial aspects of heart failure. 12. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation and device therapy at the end of life. 13. Care of the dying. 14. Spiritualty and religious care. 15. Supporting carers.