Defining Heart Failure, Its Symptoms and Treatment

When your heart cannot pump enough blood through your body to suit your needs, this condition is known as heart failure. Sometimes called congestive heart failure, there are a number of diseases like hypertension or coronary artery disease that can contribute to this problem. Usually your heart just ends up stiffening or grows frail ? either way, the blood cannot course throughout the body adequately without a strong heart.

The different diseases or health problems that lead to heart failure cannot usually be overturned but you can treat the problem itself and prolong your life. There are medications that can help the symptoms of heart failure just as there are things like improving your diet, losing weight and exercising that can be beneficial too. Perhaps the best way overall to prevent heart failure is to control and prevent the conditions that led up to it in the first place.

Symptoms of heart failure

Heart failure is not sudden; rather it slowly develops over time and becomes a chronic occurrence. However, symptoms may come to a head abruptly so it would seem that the condition was sudden. To understand heart failure, you should know its symptoms to try and identify them yourself. Here are some of those symptoms:

1. Shortness of breath, especially during physical activity.
2. Edema in your feet, ankles and legs.
3. Irregular or fast heartbeat.
4. Fluid retention that cause weight gain.
5. Lack of concentration and mental alertness.
6. Coughing or wheezing that may produce discolored phlegm.

The above symptoms laid out chronic heart failure but there are a few symptoms that are related to acute heart failure, meaning that something suddenly affects your heart’s ability to function properly. Here are some of the acute symptoms:

1. Intensity and sharpness of any of the symptoms of chronic heart failure.
2. The irregular or fast heart beat could cause palpitations or a sudden stop to beating.
3. Chest pain that might mimic a heart attack.

Treatment of heart failure

Continuous management of heart failure is needed to prolong your life and put off more serious treatment such as surgery or even a heart transplant. In fact, some treatments can actually improve heart function, creating a stronger, steadier heart beat. Each person is different so what may work for one person would not necessarily work for you.

If the problem is structural, such as a deformed heart valve, surgical corrections can be successful and reverse the heart failure. Other times, the right combination of medications could slow or stop heart failure from continuing or getting worse. Implantable surgical devices such as pacemakers or defibrillators may also be an option, depending on the damage to the heart and the progression of heart failure. Heart transplant surgery is an option but there are long waiting lists throughout the country and there is no guarantee that it would be possible. Overall, it is the right balance of medications and/or surgical options that will likely work the best to prevent heart failure from taking your life before you are ready.