Common Erectile Dysfunction Drug Not Helpful for Heart Failure Patients

It turns out that a commonly used erectile dysfunction drug, sildenafil, does not help patients who have heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. That's a condition in which the heart’s lower chambers are stiff and cannot relax enough to fill fully between beats. That's the finding of the RELAX study presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 62nd Annual Scientific Session and simultaneously published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Lead author and Mayo Clinic heart failure specialist, Margaret Redfield, M.D., says, “It was surprising, a disappointment and contradictory to our hypothesis. There are few options for these patients, and we had hoped we would find something.”

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Physician b-roll, heart failure graphic and sound bites with Dr. Redfield are available in the down loads above

Expert title for broadcast cg: Dr. Margaret Redfield, Mayo Clinic Cardiologist