The dismal tale about chronic heart failure has often been told: five million people in the US have a progressive disease that will kill 70 to 80% of them within eight years of diagnosis, and there is no cure, apart from heart transplantation, in sight. Therapy consists of drugs for early-stage patients, to manage the symptoms but not the progression of disease. Cardiac resynchronization therapy devices provide some benefit, but only to about a third of the 15% of all heart failure patients eligible for them; and finally, at the end stages of the disease, certain patients well enough to undergo major invasive surgery get left ventricular assist devices (LVADs), implantable pumps that replace the functioning of the heart by keeping end-organs perfused, gaining them perhaps two or three additional years of life. Millions of chronic heart failure patients have essentially had no beneficial therapies available to them.
Well, there’s a new chapter in heart failure, and it looks like it’s going to have a happier ending. New...