Managing Congestive Heart Failure at Home by Transitioning From Intravenous Furosemide to a Subcutaneous Route.

Heart failure is one of the leading chronic conditions affecting millions of individuals in the U.S. and across the globe. Congestive heart failure (CHF) is one of the leading diagnoses resulting in acute hospitalizations for administration of intravenous (IV) diuretics, hence putting significant direct economic costs from in-hospital treatment and indirect due to loss of work being hospitalized. With the ever-increasing strain on hospital beds and staffing from a variety of acute illnesses, there has been an urge to treat patients in outpatient settings as much as possible, providing highquality care and using hospitalization only as a last resort. Recently, there have been successful attempts to treat patients with subcutaneous furosemide and achieve results similar to conventional IV diuresis. In this article, we highlight some of the details and outcomes of these studies and summarize the important considerations about the utility of subcutaneous furosemide in treating CHF exacerbation.