Heart Failure and Transplant

The goal of our Heart Failure program is to improve function and quality of life and postpone, or completely avoid, a congestive heart failure (CHF) patient's need for a transplant. Drawing on the combined resources of the VCU Medical Center, we follow a very individualized approach to each patient's treatment.

A site for a variety of clinical drug trials, Pauley Heart Center provides physicians and their patients access to investigative drugs which may not be available at other medical centers. Our cardiologists administer innovative therapies that provide dramatic results, often enabling patients to gain full recovery of heart function.

Heart failure specialists at Pauley Heart Center help many patients deemed untreatable or inoperable by other physicians. With careful and continuous monitoring, near-death patients who were initially hospitalized for a transplant procedure have improved to require outpatient treatment only. In place of medications, some recovering CHF patients need only a carefully controlled diet and a regular exercise program. Today, hundreds of patients are followed by the Heart Failure team on an outpatient basis.

For CHF patients who require therapies beyond, or in addition to, medication and life-style modification, we work in close collaboration with our Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery to provide a number of surgical approaches to managing heart failure. They include reshaping of abnormal bulges in the wall of the heart, valve repair, cardiac defibrillator implant, placement of other heart assist devices, and most recently, placement of the Total Artificial Heart (TAH-t). The VCU Medical Center is one of just three hospitals in the United States, and seven others worldwide, currently certified to implant the TAH-t.

 For more information on cardiac surgery, please visit our Cardiovascular Surgery site.