Having heart failure means that, for a given reason, your heart can not properly pump blood as it was used to.
The most common reason is that your heart muscle has been damaged, for example as a result of a heart attack. It can be very disturbing to learn that you or someone close to you has heart failure.
Causes and symptoms:
There are many reasons you could be diagnosed with heart failure. This can be sudden or slowly occurring over months or even years. The most common causes are heart attacks, as we already mentioned.
But in addition to that, other causal factors can include hypertension and cardiomyopathy, heart valve problems, alcohol or recreational drugs, arrhythmia, congenital heart disease, a viral infection affecting the heart muscle , some cancer treatments.
The main symptoms of heart failure include shortness of breath after a little physical effort, lack of strength and energy to go after an exercise, ankles and legs swollen.
Some people also experience other symptoms, such as persistent coughing, fast heart rate, and dizziness.
The symptoms can develop quickly, so we talk about acute heart failure, or gradually over weeks or months, what is called chronic heart failure.