The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a drug to treat chronic heart failure that may help keep patients out of the hospital.

The drug, which Amgen will sell under the name Corlanor, works by slowing the heart rate, which helps relieve stress on the organ. Amgen licensed the American rights to the drug, known generically as ivabradine, from the French company Servier, which has been selling it in Europe for about a decade.

Many Wall Street analysts and heart failure specialists are lukewarm about the drug, which has had mixed results in clinical trials. They are more excited about a heart failure drug from Novartis, called LCZ696, which could be approved by August.

Amgen’s drug will be for “a niche of patients, potentially small, compared to a full cohort of patients who will be immediate candidates for LCZ696,” Dr. Clyde W. Yancy, chief of the cardiology division at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, wrote in an email.