Cesar, Farah

Heart failure (HF) is a clinical syndrome with various manifestations (Groenewegen, Rutten, Mosterd, & Hoes, 2020). However, self-care for patients with complex illnesses, such as HF, can be very challenging. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] (2020) reported that an estimated 6.2 million adults in the United States had HF. It is generally estimated that between 1% and 2% of adults in developed countries have HF (Groenewegen et al., 2020). Although important advances in managing HF were made before approximately 1990, improvements have been significant since that time (Choi et al., 2019). However, some patients with HF still struggle. The prognosis of HF remains poor for most patients. One estimate suggests 87%, 73%, 57%, and 35% survival rates at 1, 2, 5, and 10 years, respectively (Groenewegen et al., 2020). A radical treatment for HF is a heart transplant, but due to the shortage of donated organs, this option remains out of reach for most patients (McDonagh et al., 2021). Recent success in the transplantation of a porcine heart into a human recipient suggests that some HF patients may benefit from this procedure in the future, but today, patients diagnosed with HF may receive a heart transplant from a diseased human donor (Kotz, 2022).