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It would be nice to have a cure for every type of congestive heart failure. For most patients, CHF is a chronic disease and has no permanent cure. However, CHF can often be treated to improve your heart function. The symptoms and severity of CHF wax and wane. This means that you can expect to have periods of normal functioning and normal exercise tolerance, and then suffer from worsening symptoms like inability to catch your breath when walking or breathlessness when you lie flat. CHF is also a progressive disease. This means that every time you recover from a serious exacerbation, you don’t quite bounce back to a state where you were as well as before the attack. This is why it’s so important to prevent exacerbations and recognize them early. So your ER doc or cardiologist can help minimize the progression of your disease. There are many excellent medications that can help treat your heart failure, and a diet low in salt and low in fat can also help. Weight loss can definitely help. You need to quit smoking if you smoke. Once your heart failure becomes bad enough, the only treatment to make you feel better could be a heart transplant or an artificial heart assist device. But these can only be used in patients who have certain health qualifications.
