 My name is Lance Berger. I'm a cardiologist here at Jersey Shore University Medical Center. I'm director of the ECHO Lab and I'm involved with the Heart Failure Center here at Jersey Shore. Heart failure is when the heart can't meet the demands of the body. In other words, in about half the time the heart can't pump enough blood and in another half of the patients it does not relax properly. Despite the fact that there's a heart failure awareness week, there's not a lot of emphasis placed on heart failure education. We know that 5.7 million Americans have heart failure. We know that there are about a million hospitalizations every year. We know that there are about a half a million new cases of heart failure every year and about 250,000 people die with heart failure every year. Heart failure has become such an important national problem that Congress has recognized a week of Valentine's Day as heart failure awareness week. People with heart failure can often mistake the signs of heart failure for something else. Oftentimes they think they're just getting older, sometimes it's just fatigue, sometimes it's shortness of breath. It can be very difficult to discern that or to decide that that's what is causing this new change in your ability to do things. Fortunately, there are many more treatment options today than there were even 15 or 20 years ago. There are three classes of medications that we use. All three medications are very helpful in helping to improve outcome in patients with heart failure who have a weakened heart muscle. It's critically important that we recognize that heart failure in many instances can be prevented. Appropriately treating high blood pressure can be helpful. Diabetes, treating diabetes can be helpful and maintaining good physical fitness is essential to preventing heart failure. Because it's such a growing problem, we've invested a tremendous amount of effort in trying to improve the outcome of heart failure. The good news now is that there are new treatments for heart failure. And if you recognize it early and treat it early, the outcomes are better. It's important to know that the cardiovascular specialists here at Hackensack Meridian Health have the expertise needed to get you on the road to recovery.