Heart Failure, Heart Transplantation & Mechanical Assistance
Heart failure is a condition in which the heart's ability to pump blood is weaker than normal. When this happens, blood cannot circulate around the body adequately. Eventually, heart failure leads to the failure of other vital organs due to poor blood flow to those organs. Heart failure affects 5.7 million Americans, and there are more than 670,000 new cases each year.
Heart failure patients at Northwestern Memorial are treated through the Center for Heart Failure at the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. Using a team approach to healthcare, doctors diagnose and treat heart failure with a wide variety of therapies. These therapies range from carefully chosen medications to heart surgeries, including, when necessary, heart transplantation. Heart transplantation is offered to patients who have worsening heart failure that can no longer be managed with medication or other therapies.
We strive to provide high quality healthcare to all of our patients. In an effort to reach our goal of The Best Patient Experience, we collect data about our patients, their treatments and their outcomes. This data helps us to understand what we’re doing that is working and when we might need to improve our practices for the best possible patient outcomes.
Below is a list of our heart failure, heart transplantation & mechanical assistance quality measures.
Volume
Outcome
- Heart failure mortality
- Death from any cause within 30 days of hospitalization for heart failure
- Heart transplant: patient survival at one year after transplant
- Heart transplant: graft survival at one year after transplant
- 30-day rate of readmission for heart failure
- Survival curve for heart transplantation program
- Survival curve for LVADs as bridge to heart transplantation
Safe Care
- Counseling to stop smoking for heart failure patients
- Evaluation of left ventricular systolic function for heart failure
- Heart failure bundle
- Heart failure discharge instructions
- Heart failure medications: ACEI or ARB for LVSD
Feature
Highlighting the Performance of the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute.
Visit our clinical outcomes microsite.