Search

The treatment of chronic systolic heart failure has shown important improvements, but there are no evidence-based medical treatment options for patients with diastolic heart failure. A recent elaborate study, the TOPCAT trial, failed to show a beneficial effect of spironolactone on the primary composite endpoint of cardiovascular death or hospital admission for heart failure in patients with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). After ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, this is the third group of medications that previously showed a beneficial effect in patients with heart failure and a reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), but failed in HFpEF patients. The difficulties in the study design and in interpreting the results of the TOPCAT study may contribute to this negative conclusion. However, a better understanding of the pathophysiology of HFpEF is needed to find strategies that improve the clinical outcome in patients with diastolic heart failure.

Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HF-PEF) is part of the 'heart-failure spectrum', but differs pathophysiologically from heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HF-REF). Metabolic abnormalities in HF-PEF cause intrinsic stiffness of the cardiac myocyte and alternation of the collagen turn-over in the extracellular matrix of the heart. HF-PEF is most often present in elderly women with a history of hypertension, diabetes mellitus or metabolic syndrome, and obesity. Signs of fluid retention are often not present on physical examination in patients with HF-PEF. The most notable echocardiographic abnormalities seen in HF-PEF are an enlarged left atrium with hypertrophy, reduced left ventricular relaxation and elevated filling pressures. Co-morbidly and advanced age are largely determinant for mortality, which in HF-PEF is somewhat lower than in HF-REF. Evidence-based drug therapy for HF-PEF is currently lacking; ongoing studies are evaluating medications other than the well-established drugs used to treat HF-REF.