The Advanced Heart Failure, Heart Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support Program at Rush provides comprehensive, state-of-the-art care for patients with advanced heart failure.

The program's multidisciplinary team includes heart failure and heart transplant cardiologists and transplant surgeons, as well as immunologists, psychologists, social workers and dietitians to produce the best possible patient outcomes.

Working together, our specialists create treatment plans from a wide range of medical and surgical options — from advanced medical therapy to complex heart surgeries. And since investigational strategies are also being studied at Rush, patients can benefit from the latest innovations.

What to Expect from the Program

We tailor treatment to your patient's needs, with you playing a key role. Our program is committed to providing you ongoing, up-to-date information and to working closely with you so that patients receive quality, coordinated care.

As a referring physician, you can expect the following:

• Timely, comprehensive consultation reports
• Updates on your patient after each phase of treatment
• Hassle-free and prompt appointment scheduling
• Coordinated and efficient services supported by Epic, an electronic clinical patient accounting and registration system to make all forms, patient signatures and documentation paperless
• Multidisciplinary care involving specialists in other fields and advanced practice nurses, social workers and dietitians
• Seamless emergent transfers of critically ill patinets via the Rush Patient Transfer Center at (312) NOW-RUSH
• Your patient's return to your practice post-treatment.

Advanced Treatment Options

For treatment of heart failure, patients at Rush have access to a full range of options:

Medical management: Cardiologists at Rush have the expertise to effectively treat patients using the latest medications, including investigations heart failure drugs such as inotropic agents and vasopressin receptor antagonists.

Device therapy: To improve heart failure symptoms and survival, atients may receive a biventricular pacemaker, as part of cardiac resynchronization therapy, or an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD).

Surgery: Some patients with advanced forms of heart failure can benefit from revascularization techniques, coronary artery bypass or mitral valve surgery.

Mechanical devices: The team at Rush has extensive experienc ein the surgical implantation of state-of-the-art mechanical devices as a bridge to transplant. These devices include the CardioWest temporary total artificial heart and left ventricular assist devices such as HeartMate XVE and HeartMate II.

Transplant: When a transplant is necessary, the transplant team at Rush is one of the region's most experienced. Since Rush began its transplant program in 1994, the team has performed close to 200 transplants with survival rates that meet or exceed national benchmarks.

• The patient has New York Heart Association class 3 or 4 heart failure despite medical therapy (especially if patient has renal insurriciency and/or pulmonary hypertension).
• The patient's ventricular tachycardia is not amenable to medication or to interventional therapy.
• The patient's angina is not amenable to revascularization (percutaneous or surgical).
• The patient's peak exercise oxygen consumption (PVO2) < 15ml/kg/min.
• The patient has had two or more heart failure admissions in a six-month period. 
• The patient has a poor psychosocial situation that might benefit from heart failure or transplant resources (education, social work, etc.).
• The patient is planning to undergo high-risk coronary artery bypass graft/valve surgery has a low ejection fraction and may benefit from mechanical circulatory support as a bridge to recovery or transplant.
• The patient's heart failure medications cannot be titrated due to hypotension or other symptoms.
• The patient requires high doses of diuretics (1.5 mg/kg of furosemide or equivalent).
• The patient requires inotrope therapy.
• Standards medical therapy has failed, and the patient is considering a mechanical assist device as a bridge to transplant.
• Standard medical therapy has failed, and the patient is considering experimental drug therapy.