Around the world, including in countries with a high standard of living, there is a very large percentage of people who, to one degree or another, have health problems, including heart function. More and more often, doctors observe in their patients symptoms of heart failure, a disease that is usually chronic and quite dangerous for health, and most importantly, human life.
Each of us has heard many stories about the passing away of life, including famous people, because of this ailment. But how to avoid it, what are the main causes of heart failure, can this problem be avoided?
The most common cause of a disease such as heart failure is the narrowing of those arteries that are responsible for supplying the heart muscle itself with oxygen and nutrients. Despite the fact that diseases associated with blood vessels, as practice shows, manifest themselves at a relatively young age, heart failure is diagnosed, as a rule, already in elderly people. It can be noted that the diagnosis of heart failure reveals symptoms in a greater number of cases in women, but the reason for this lies solely in the fact that men simply do not survive, dying from various kinds of vascular diseases, for example, myocardial infarction.
It is fatigue and weakness that, in fact, are the first bells, the first obvious, one can say, tangible symptoms of heart failure. The reason for such a sensation in a patient is a decrease in blood flow, the volume of blood that can “distill” the heart. The rest of the blood accumulates in the so-called places of sludge or "depot". They are located in a person in the abdominal cavity, as well as in the veins of the lower extremities, by the way, swelling of the legs and bloating of the veins are a clear sign that it would be nice to visit a cardiologist.
Among other things, symptoms of heart failure include a seemingly not quite related component, such as difficulty breathing. The fact is that with a decrease in blood flow, fluid accumulates not only in the limbs or liver, but also in the lungs, which, in turn, makes it difficult for oxygen to access the capillaries that nourish the lungs, making it difficult for the latter to work. As an option for the manifestation of this symptom in everyday life, there are episodes when the patient can wake up at night with obvious signs of suffocation. History knows that the famous President Roosevelt, who suffered from heart failure, slept in a sitting position in his chair, as he suffered from frequent attacks of suffocation. In extremely severe cases, such a borderline state as pulmonary edema can occur, which can be fatal.
It is clear that it is impossible to make a diagnosis on your own, without being a specialist, only by the above mentioned signs, and even more so to engage in such an ungrateful thing as self-medication. You must immediately contact a specialist. The diagnostic procedure will begin in this case by listening with a stethoscope in order to detect noise in the lungs due to possibly accumulated fluid, as well as auscultation of the heart and valves. One of the most striking signs for a specialist that determines the symptoms of heart failure is, of course, blue limbs. Naturally, in the diagnosis of this disease, electronic medicine is also actively used. First of all, these include cardiographs, echocardiographs, radionuclide cardiographs and other technical means.
Heart failure is a really serious disease, but the right lifestyle and preventive measures will help to prevent it, thereby prolonging a person's full life.