Sunday, June 28, 2009

Heart Failure - The Basic Knowledge

Heart failure occurs when your heart can’t supply enough blood to the body pars or heart can’t occupy minimum level of blood. Many types of heart conditions and symptoms can lead to heart failure, including coronary artery disease, heart valve disease, high blood pressure, congenital heart disease, or cardiac viral infections. Patients they have heart failure may be suffer from shortness of breath, fatigue, and have difficulty exercising. Their life may significantly reduce.
Fortunately, our health care and hospitality increased with lot of new and new techniques and technologies, so we can reduce the symptoms of heart and increase the chance of survival. But, unfortunately, some studies show that many doctors can’t save and can’t give the 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 can find out some topics which will help you for the caring you need.

Types of Heart Failure

Normally patients show three types of heart failure:-dilated cardiomyopathy (cardiomyopathy is heart muscle disease), hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and diastolic heart failure.


Dilated cardiomyopathy is the most common type of heart failure. When Ventricle get weakened, flaccid and dilated, then 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 blood that they have. Dilated cardiomyopathy is the end result of many types of heart disease, especially coronary artery disease and valvular heart disease.


Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is usually because of 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 suffering from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy have an increased risk of sudden death.

Diastolic heart failure is similar to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy but not because of the genetic condition, 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. This type of heart failure mainly seen in older citizen especially in women, and also individuals, they have 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).

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