Heart failure occurs when the heart is unable to adequately fill with blood, or is unable to adequately pump enough blood to meet the body's needs. Many types of heart conditions can lead to heart failure, including coronary artery disease, heart valve disease, high blood presssure, congenital heart disease, or cardiac viral infections. Patients with heart failure often suffer from shortness of breath, fatigue, and have difficulty exercising. Their life expectancy is often significantly reduced.
Fortunately, a lot of progress is being made in reducing symptoms and increasing survival of patients with heart failure. But, unfortunately, studies show that many doctors fail to offer adequate treatment to their patients with heart failure. Thus, patients with heart failure need to make special efforts to educate themselves about their disease and the available treatments, and to be especially vigilant in monitoring new breakthroughs in therapy.
Here you will find many of the resources necessary to make sure you're getting the care you need.
How the Heart Works This article describes how the heart works - how the heart's chambers and valves control the flow of blood through the heart, and how the normal pumping action of the heart supplies the body's needs for oxygen and nutrients.
Types of Heart Failure
There are three general varieties of heart failure - dilated cardiomyopathy (cardiomyopathy is heart muscle disease), hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and diastolic heart failure.
Dilated cardiomyopathy is the most common variety of heart failure. It occurs when the ventricles (the large pumping chambers of the heart) become weakened, flaccid and dilated. As a result, the pumping action of the ventricle becomes weak, the amount of blood pumped with each heart beat drops, and the body's organs may not receive their full quotient of blood. Dilated cardiomyopathy is the end result of many types of heart disease, especially coronary artery disease and valvular heart disease. You can read all about dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure here.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is usually a genetic condition, and often runs in families. It is characterized by a thickening of the heart muscle, resulting in "stiff" ventricles. The stiffness impairs the filling of the heart with blood, and can lead to episodes of extreme shortness of breath in some patients, especially during exercise. The thickening of the heart muscle also can cause an obstruction in the left ventricle similar to that seen with aortic stenosis. And some patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy have an increased risk of sudden death. You can read all about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy here.
Diastolic heart failure is similar to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in that it is caused by a "stiffening" of the heart muscle, leading to impaired filling of the heart with blood. But unlike hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, diastolic heart failure is often not accompanied by thickening of the heart muscle, and is not thought to be a genetic disorder. It tends to occur in older individuals, often in women, and often in people with high blood pressure. It is characterized by relatively sudden episodes of severe shortness of breath, which is caused by too much fluid in the lungs (a condition called pulmonary edema). You can read all about diastolic heart. failure here.
