The left side of the heart is crucial for normal heart function and is usually where heart failure begins.
Generally, heart failure starts on the left side – specifically, the left ventricle, your heart's main pumping chamber. Heart failure often occurs after another condition has weakend the heart. Any of the below conditions can weaken the heart and cause heart failure: Coronary artery disease and heart attack.
The right side of the heart usually becomes weaker in response to failure on the left side. The right side of the heart brings in the circulated blood from the body and sends it to the lungs for oxygen. When the left side of the heart weakens, the right side of the heart has to work harder to compensate.
The left ventricle is larger and stronger than the right because it has to pump blood through your whole body. When people have left-sided heart failure, their heart's left side has to work harder to pump the same amount of blood.
This is because, as blood backs up from the left side of the heart into the pulmonary artery, the right side of the heart has to work harder to move blood to the left side. However, right-sided heart failure can also occur even when the left side of the heart is apparently normal.
Left-sided heart failure is the most common type. Right-sided heart failure: Here the right ventricle of the heart is too weak to pump enough blood to the lungs.
Left-sided heart failure occurs when the heart loses its ability to pump blood. This prevents organs from receiving enough oxygen. The condition can lead to complications that include right-sided heart failure and organ damage.
Blood pressure is known to be an independent predictor of outcome in HF, although systolic blood pressure has generally been the focus.
People 65 years or older have a higher risk of heart failure. Older adults are also more likely to have other health conditions that cause heart failure. Family history of heart failure makes your risk of heart failure higher. Genetics may also play a role.
Warning signs and symptoms of heart failure include shortness of breath, chronic coughing or wheezing, swelling, fatigue, loss of appetite, and others. Heart failure means the heart has failed to pump the way it should in order to circulate oxygen-rich blood throughout the body.
Most heart attacks involve discomfort in the center or left side of the chest that lasts for more than a few minutes or that goes away and comes back. The discomfort can feel like uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness, or pain.
Stage 2 of Congestive Heart Failure
Stage two of congestive heart failure will produce symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, or heart palpitations after you participate in physical activity.
The right side of your heart receives oxygen-poor blood from your veins and pumps it to your lungs, where the blood picks up oxygen and gets rid of carbon dioxide. The left side of your heart receives oxygen-rich blood from your lungs and pumps it through your arteries to the rest of your body.
Left-sided heart failure occurs when the left ventricle, the heart's main pumping power source, is gradually weakened. When this occurs, the heart is unable to pump oxygen-rich blood from the lungs to the heart's left atrium, into the left ventricle and on through the body and the heart has to work harder.
Heart Failure: Quick Facts
About half of people who develop heart failure die within 5 years of diagnosis. 3. Most people with end-stage heart failure have a life expectancy of less than 1 year.
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.
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.
The right ventricle, or right chamber, moves “used” blood from your heart back to your lungs to be resupplied with oxygen. So when you have right-side heart failure, the right chamber has lost its ability to pump. That means your heart can't fill with enough blood, and the blood backs up into the veins.
Although heart failure is a serious condition that progressively gets worse over time, certain cases can be reversed with treatment. Even when the heart muscle is impaired, there are a number of treatments that can relieve symptoms and stop or slow the gradual worsening of the condition.
Systolic failure: The left ventricle loses its ability to contract normally. The heart can't pump with enough force to push enough blood into circulation. This is also known as heart failure with reduced ejection, or HFrEF.
The heart is unable to regenerate heart muscle after a heart attack and lost cardiac muscle is replaced by scar tissue. Scar tissue does not contribute to cardiac contractile force and the remaining viable cardiac muscle is thus subject to a greater hemodynamic burden.