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Important Considerations in Pediatric Heart Failure

  • Heart Failure (HJ Eisen, Section Editor)
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Abstract

Purpose of Review

The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of contemporary knowledge specific to the causes, management, and outcome of heart failure in children.

Recent Findings

While recently there have been subtle improvements in heart failure outcomes in children, these improvements lag significantly behind that of adults. There is a growing body of literature suggesting that pediatric heart failure is a unique disease process with age- and disease-specific myocardial adaptations. In addition, the heterogenous etiologies of heart failure in children contribute to differential response to therapies and challenge the ability to obtain meaningful results from prospective clinical trials.

Summary

Consideration of novel clinical trial designs with achievable but clinically relevant endpoints and focused study of the mechanisms underlying pediatric heart failure secondary to cardiomyopathies and structural heart disease are essential if we hope to advance care and identify targeted and effective therapies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY, USA

    J. Blake Wall

  2. Division of Cardiology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Colorado Denver Anschutz Medical Campus and Children’s Hospital Colorado, Aurora, CO, USA

    Anastacia M. Garcia, Roni M. Jacobsen & Shelley D. Miyamoto

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  1. J. Blake Wall
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  2. Anastacia M. Garcia
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  4. Shelley D. Miyamoto
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shelley D. Miyamoto.

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Conflict of Interest

Shelley D. Miyamoto is scientific co-founder and shareholder in CoramiR Biomedical, Inc. In addition, Dr. Miyamoto has a patent CU2650H licensed to University of Colorado, a patent CU1250H licensed to University of Colorado, and a patent CU3250H pending to University of Colorado. The other authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with animal subjects performed by any of the authors. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the human studies reported in this article that were performed by the authors (SDM, AMG).

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Heart Failure

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Wall, J.B., Garcia, A.M., Jacobsen, R.M. et al. Important Considerations in Pediatric Heart Failure. Curr Cardiol Rep 22, 141 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11886-020-01383-1

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