Description
Heart failure is a chronic cardiac condition when because of weakened function of cardiac muscle heart is unable to supply the organism with needed volume of blood, and, consequently, body tissues and organs suffer from oxygen and nutrients deficiency.
Because of that, cardiac chambers and its mass increase, heart starts beating faster what temporarily meets organism’s need for oxygen and nutrients. Accordingly, for some time no symptoms of cardiac weakness are present. Compensatory mechanisms gradually deplete, and the heart fails to pump out and receive as much blood as it was able to do earlier what causes clinical symptoms of heart failure, such as shorthness of breath, especially during physical exercise, fatigue and feeling of increased pulsatility.
Possible causes of hear failure may be as follows:
- Ischaemic heart disease, myocardial infarction.
- Poorly controlled high blood pressure (arterial hypertension).
- Valvular heart diseases.
- Disorders of cardiac muscle (dilatative, hypertrophic, etc. cardiomyopathies) or heart muscle inflammation (myocarditis).
- Congenital heart diseases.
- Serious lung diseases emaciating the right side of the heart.
- Complications caused by diabetes mellitus.
The heart can also fail because of low physical activity, especially in old age.
