Final answer:
To treat heart failure resulting from left ventricular systolic dysfunction, medical professionals employ medications like beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers to lower blood pressure and manage heart symptoms. These treatments aim to reduce the workload on the heart and increase its pumping efficiency to prevent complications such as pulmonary edema.
Step-by-step explanation:
Patients with heart failure due to left ventricular systolic dysfunction are commonly treated with medications and therapies that aim to improve cardiovascular conditions, such as high blood pressure and heart failure. These treatments help to relieve heart failure symptoms, particularly when patients aren't responding to ACE inhibitors and diuretics. For those in a hypertensive crisis, an IV drip may be used to rapidly lower blood pressure and mitigate risks of heart failure.
Medications such as beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, and diuretics are employed to treat high blood pressure, chest pain (angina) caused by a reduced blood supply to the heart muscle, and to manage arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythms). These drugs work by decreasing the heart's workload and improving its pumping efficiency. Specifically, calcium channel blockers decrease the strength of contraction and afterload; the latter being the tension the ventricles must overcome to pump blood effectively against the resistance in the vascular system.
In cases of pulmonary edema resulting from heart failure, treatment focuses on addressing the fluid 'back up' in the pulmonary capillaries by reducing the increased hydrostatic pressure within them. Research also continues into identifying new targets for drugs that can increase the strength of cardiac muscle contractions, such as the discovery of a protein that affects the calcium-ion pump controlling muscle contraction, potentially leading to more effective treatments for heart failure.