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Watch the video to learn more about how palliative care can help people living with heart failure manage symptoms, improve quality of life, support caregivers, and understand when hospice may be appropriate.
Living with heart failure can affect much more than the heart. It can impact a person’s energy, comfort, independence, emotional well-being, and daily quality of life. For many patients and families, palliative care can provide an added layer of support while they continue receiving care from their heart failure team.
What Is Palliative Care?
Palliative care is specialized support for people living with a serious illness. For patients with heart failure, that support may include help with symptoms, emotional stress, spiritual concerns, care planning, and the challenges that come with changes in daily function or quality of life.
A palliative care team takes time to get to know each person as an individual. The goal is to understand what has been stressful, what matters most, and what kind of support would be most helpful.
How Palliative Care Can Help With Heart Failure
Heart failure can bring many physical and emotional challenges. Palliative care works alongside a patient’s cardiology and healthcare teams to help improve comfort and quality of life.
Palliative care may help patients with heart failure by supporting:
- Shortness of breath, pain, fatigue, or other symptoms
- Emotional, psychological, or spiritual distress
- Changes in independence or daily function
- Quality of life concerns
- Conversations about care preferences and goals
- Stress or burden experienced by caregivers and loved ones
- Frequent hospitalizations or repeated healthcare needs
Palliative care does not replace a patient’s heart failure team. Instead, it adds another layer of care focused on support, comfort, communication, and helping patients feel as well as possible.
Supporting the Patient and Their Care Partners
Heart failure affects the whole circle of care, not just the person living with the illness. Family members, friends, and other care partners often carry stress as they help manage appointments, medications, symptoms, and day-to-day needs.
Palliative care teams recognize this and provide support for caregivers, too. That may include helping families understand what to expect, talk through difficult decisions, manage stress, and feel more supported throughout the illness.
What a Palliative Care Referral Really Means
A referral to palliative care does not mean a provider is giving up. It does not mean there are no treatment options left. It also does not mean a person is dying and no one has told them.
A palliative care referral simply means the healthcare team sees an opportunity for more support.
Patients can continue seeing their doctors, receiving treatments, going to the hospital when needed, and following their current care plan. Palliative care is there to help alongside those treatments, not automatically change or stop them.
Palliative Care and Hospice Are Not the Same Thing
Palliative care and hospice are related, but they are not the same. Both focus on quality of life, comfort, support, and making sure care aligns with what matters most to the patient.
The difference is that hospice is a specific type of palliative care for people who may be nearing the end of life and want to focus primarily on comfort. Hospice may be appropriate when someone is believed to have six months or less to live, or when treatments are no longer helping in the way they once did.
When Hospice May Be Worth Discussing
For someone living with heart failure, a hospice conversation may be helpful when treatments or hospitalizations start to feel more burdensome than beneficial.
For example, a person may have been in and out of the hospital several times for heart failure. If they come home from a hospitalization and do not feel better than when they went in, they may begin wondering whether they want to continue that cycle. At that point, hospice can help support a comfort-focused plan of care, often with the goal of helping the person remain at home and feel as comfortable as possible.
Palliative Care Can Start Earlier Than Many People Think
Non-hospice palliative care can be helpful at many stages of heart failure. A person does not need to stop treatment, have a certain prognosis, or give up their goals in order to receive support.
Palliative care is about helping people live as well as possible while navigating a serious illness. For patients with heart failure and their families, it can provide guidance, comfort, communication, and practical support when it is needed most.
