Common symptoms of heart failure include breathlessness, fatigue, swollen legs and a fast heartbeat. Heart failure can't be cured, but there are things you can do to help you improve your quality of life. You can manage your heart failure with lifestyle changes, medicines and sometimes surgery.
You may have trouble breathing, an irregular heartbeat, swollen legs, neck veins that stick out, and sounds from fluid built up in your lungs. Your doctor will check for these and other signs of heart failure. A test called an echocardiogram is often the best test to diagnose your heart failure.
Heart failure can be acute, like after a heart attack, or it may develop over time, for example because of permanently high blood pressure or coronary artery disease. Depending on how severe heart failure is, it may go unnoticed, only cause minor symptoms, or really affect your physical fitness.
Warning signs that occur a month beforehand could be chest discomfort, fatigue, and shortness of breath.
Severe or persistent shortness of breath. Fainting or passing out. A fast or irregular heartbeat, palpitations or a racing heart that does not go away. A need to sleep sitting up on more pillows than usual.
Since the symptoms of heart disease can range from mild to severe and from common to atypical, heart disease is often misdiagnosed as another health condition. Other diagnoses include anxiety, anemia, and kidney and lung diseases. Heart disease is most commonly mistaken as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Tests for heart failure
Tests you may have to diagnose heart failure include: blood tests – to check whether there's anything in your blood that might indicate heart failure or another illness. an electrocardiogram (ECG) – this records the electrical activity of your heart to check for problems.
The progress of heart failure is unpredictable and different for each person. In many cases, the symptoms remain at a stable level for quite some time (months or years) before becoming worse. In some cases the severity and symptoms become gradually worse over time.
In general, about half of all people diagnosed with congestive heart failure will survive 5 years. About 30% will survive for 10 years. In patients who receive a heart transplant, about 21% of patients are alive 20 years later.
Uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain in the center of your chest. It lasts more than a few minutes, or goes away and comes back. Pain or discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw or stomach. Shortness of breath with or without chest discomfort.
If you wake up feeling not refreshed, you have daytime sleepiness or if you need to curtail your daytime activity because of lack of energy, these could be signs your heart failure isn't being managed as well as it could be, Dr. Freeman says.
Heart failure can happen at any age. It happens to both men and women, but men often develop it at a younger age than women. Your chance of developing heart failure increases if: You're 65 years old or older.
Loop diuretics should be used as first-line agents, with thiazides added for refractory fluid overload. Diuretic treatment should be combined with a low-salt diet,8 a β-blocker, and an ACE inhibitor. The practitioner should begin with oral furosemide, 20 to 40 mg once daily.
Anxiety, Sweating, and Nausea
But they could also be early signs for heart trouble. If these heart symptoms are followed by shortness of breath, extreme fatigue, pain, a feeling of fullness, or aching in your chest (that might radiate to the back, shoulders, arm, neck, or throat), get to an emergency room immediately.
The difference is that, when extra heartbeats in the upper and lower chambers are the cause of abnormal rhythm, symptoms may feel like an initial skip or hard thumping beat followed by a racing heart. When anxiety is the trigger, heart rate typically increases steadily rather than suddenly.
Fast heart rate (more than 120 -150 beats per minute), especially if you are short of breath or dizzy. Shortness of breath that's not relieved by rest. Sudden weakness or paralysis (inability to move) in your arms or legs. Sudden onset of a severe headache.
You can check for heart disease at home by measuring your pulse rate and your blood pressure if you have a blood pressure monitor. You can also monitor yourself for symptoms of heart disease, such as: Chest pain, pressure, discomfort, or tightness. Being short of breath.
However, life expectancy for a person with CHF has substantially improved over time. A person's age at diagnosis may impact prognosis. The authors report that the 5-year survival rate for people under 65 years of age was around 79%, while the rate was about 50% for those 75 and over.
Increasing age, female gender, diabetes mellitus (DM), lower hemoglobin, and dilated left atrium were strong predictors of incident HF.
Congestive heart failure, or CHF, is a type of heart disease. When the heart can't pump blood properly to the rest of the body, we call it CHF. This may be a temporary problem, or it may last a long time.
The hallmark of heart failure is dyspnea. The classic combination of raised jugular venous pressure (JVP), peripheral edema, palpable liver, basal crepitations, tachycardia, and a third heart sound is well known.