This year, some 550,000 Americans will learn that they have congestive heart failure. While that might sound like a death sentence--particularly if you fixate on the word failure--it's not. Cardiologists have got pretty good at treating the degenerative condition with drugs that prolong life and reduce symptoms.
Now comes word, from a report in last week's New England Journal of Medicine, that almost a third of patients with heart failure may also benefit from having a pacemaker implanted in their chest. But before we get into that, we need to clarify what heart failure is--and what it is not.
First what...
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