Heart failure symptoms may include: Shortness of breath with activity or when lying down. Fatigue and weakness. Swelling in the legs, ankles and feet.
Heart failure can progress, so researchers have identified four stages of the disease — A, B, C and D. Health care professionals also classify heart failure when it has progressed to stages C and D. This classification measures a patient's overall heart function and severity of symptoms.
You may have trouble breathing, an irregular heartbeat, swollen legs, neck veins that stick out, and sounds from fluid built up in your lungs. Your doctor will check for these and other signs of heart failure. A test called an echocardiogram is often the best test to diagnose your heart failure.
Left heart failure can be complicated with severe volume overload leading to respiratory distress and anasarca as well as arrhythmias (tachyarrhythmias or bradyarrhythmias), cardiogenic shock due to pump failure and death.
Left-sided heart failure is the most common type. Right-sided heart failure: Here the right ventricle of the heart is too weak to pump enough blood to the lungs.
Several health conditions, your lifestyle, and your age and family history can increase your risk for heart disease. These are called risk factors. About half of all Americans (47%) have at least 1 of 3 key risk factors for heart disease: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and smoking.
Factors that can worsen symptoms of heart failure
anaemia (a condition where the blood doesn't have enough healthy red blood cells) too much salt, fluid, or alcohol in your diet. pregnancy. some viral and bacterial infections.
When the heart can't pump enough oxygen-rich blood to meet the body's energy needs, a general feeling of tiredness or fatigue sets in. A = Activity limitation. People with heart failure are often unable to do their normal activities because they become easily tired and short of breath.
As the heart weakens, its pumping action also weakens. Blood and body fluids back up in the lungs, abdomen and/or feet and ankles. This excess fluid can make it difficult to breathe. You might also notice a feeling of fullness in the abdomen or swelling in the legs and ankles.
The life expectancy for congestive heart failure depends on the cause of heart failure, its severity, and other underlying medical conditions. In general, about half of all people diagnosed with congestive heart failure will survive 5 years. About 30% will survive for 10 years.
Left-sided Heart Failure Symptoms
Shortness of breath. Difficulty breathing when lying down. Weight gain with swelling in the feet, legs, ankles. Fluid collection in the abdomen.
Right heart failure is most commonly a result of left ventricular failure via volume and pressure overload. Clinically, patients will present with signs and symptoms of chest discomfort, breathlessness, palpitations, and body swelling.
In the final stages of heart failure, people feel breathless both during activity and at rest. Persistent coughing or wheezing. This may produce white or pink mucus. The cough may be worse at night or when lying down.
There are many things that cause abdominal swelling. One of them is fluid retention in heart failure, and usually, this is caused by fluid retention due to right-sided heart failure.
Heart failure is a serious long-term condition that will usually continue to get slowly worse over time. It can severely limit the activities you're able to do and is often eventually fatal. But it's very difficult to tell how the condition will progress on an individual basis. It's very unpredictable.
However, life expectancy for a person with CHF has substantially improved over time. A person's age at diagnosis may impact prognosis. The authors report that the 5-year survival rate for people under 65 years of age was around 79%, while the rate was about 50% for those 75 and over.
In some cases of heart failure — particularly newly diagnosed CHF or heart failure after other cardiac surgery — the heart may recover after a period of support on a VAD.
The strongest independent associations for incident HF were coronary artery disease (HR=2.94; 95% CI 1.36 to 6.33), diabetes mellitus (HR=2.00; 95% CI 1.68 to 2.38), age (HR (per 10 years)=1.80; 95% CI 1.13 to 2.87) followed by hypertension (HR=1.61; 95% CI 1.33 to 1.96), smoking (HR=1.60; 95% CI 1.45 to 1.77), male ...