What is Heart Failure?
Heart failure is a condition in which the heart loses its ability to pump blood efficiently throughout the body. Oxygen and nutrient substances in the blood provide the body the energy needed to function effectively. Heart failure can affect the heart’s left side, right side, or both. When a left-sided heart failure (left heart failure), fluid between cells in the lungs due to congestion of the pulmonary venous system.
When it comes to a failure of the right heart (right heart failure), increased venous pressure in the body, and fluid accumulates in the tissues of the lower extremities and abdominal organs (among them, the liver is the organ most commonly affected.)
Often left heart failure causes a failure on the right side, resulting in a failure of both ventricles, or biventricular.What origin is heart failure?
Heart failure may be due to different diseases and conditions, and is presented as an acute illness of sudden onset, or taking on a prolonged or chronic.
- Ischemic heart disease, heart failure, in this case, is due to the heart muscle injury and is caused by poor circulation in the coronary arteries, lack, in turn, caused by obstruction by a clot. For example, after myocardial infarction.
- Hypertension: high blood pressure.
- Diseases of the heart valves.
- Cardiomyopathy: a chronic disease of the heart muscle.
- Congenital Heart Disease
- Endocrine disorders, which include both increased and decreased metabolism, due to an alteration of thyroid function (rare).
- Severe anemia (rare).
- Viral infections and certain treatments for cancer.
- In some cases of heart failure, especially due to dilated cardiomyopathy heart does not find the cause despite extensive research.
credit to: Dra. Sabine Gill, Dr. Steen Dalby Kristensen, Dr. Neal Uren, Dr. Patrick Davey, Dr. Reginal Odbert, Dra. Montserrat Vilaseca Corbera