**1.1 General treatment of advanced heart failure**

The number of heart failure patients is rapidly increasing worldwide, creating a heart failure pandemic. Heart transplantation is the only radical treatment for patients with end-stage heart failure, but the shortage of donors severely limits its use. Although survival rates with continuous-flow ventricular assist devices have improved dramatically in recent years, they are not widely available because they are extremely expensive, require significant medical resources, and are associated with a high rate of serious complications. Effective and widely available treatments are urgently needed.
