Diastolic Heart Failure — No Time to Relax

There are 4.6 million people in the United States with heart failure today, and 550,000 new cases are being reported annually.1 Approximately 30 to 50 percent of patients with heart failure have a normal or nearly normal left ventricular ejection fraction.2 In these patients heart failure is usually due to left ventricular diastolic dysfunction. Yet despite the high prevalence of diastolic heart failure, it has received far less attention than its systolic counterpart.The epidemiology of diastolic heart failure has been incompletely described. The chief risk factors are advancing age, hypertension, diabetes, left ventricular hypertrophy, and coronary disease. In contrast . . .