Don’t worry it’s only your heart failing……..oh……..

            Recently many people close to me have been having cardiac problems and with increasing obesity and life expectancy in this country heart problems are becoming ever more common. Around 900,000 people have in the UK have heart failure with 68,000 new cases every year, primarily found in people above the age of 70. What heart failure definitely is not is your heart just stopping, (that would be a problem…) rather the weakening of a part or certain parts of your heart so that it becomes incapable of pumping the volume of blood around your body that is needed to for everything to function correctly.

There are different types of heart failure:

1. Systolic heart failure is when the ventricles of the heart do not contract properly with every beat. Severity of symptoms depends on how much the ventricles are affected. The left, right or both ventricles can be affected.
2. Diastolic heart failure is when the chambers of the heart do not fill correctly in between beats when the heart is at rest. This can be due to the ventricle walls becoming stiff and incapable of stretching far enough to accomodate a sufficient volume of blood. This can again be found on both sides of the heart.
3. Unfortunately there is a third option and this is that you can have both types at the same time!   

Heart failure rarely presents itself on its own, more often it comes accompanied with many other conditions which might include high blood pressure, certain arrhythmias and faulty heart valves.  

What are the symptoms?

            The symptoms normally depend on the side of the heart that is affected. For the left side these tend to be respiratory problems (mostly shortness of breath) made worse when lying down or doing exercise.

            If you have right sided heart failure swollen legs and ankles are commonly seen along with nausea, dizziness and loss of appetite.

How is it diagnosed?

            Heart failure is quite difficult to diagnose as the symptoms presented can be related to many many other conditions, however if it is suspected a echocardiogram is normally done (ultrasound of the heart) and from this a confident diagnosis can be made. In addition to this a blood test to test for natriuretic peptide can be done as this is sometime raised in patients with heart failure.

What can you do to protect yourself from heart failure?

            There’s nothing very specific that can be done but the usual suspects of drinking, smoking and lack of exercise all increase the risk of heart failure.

For more information on the drugs used to treat heart failure visit:

http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Heart-Failure.htm  

Other source of information:

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Heart-failure/Pages/Introduction.aspx     


Alex Butcher