In the early stage of heart failure, the patient appears asymptomatic in his/her heart due to the heart's strong compensatory capacity. However, in physical examination, the heart can be detected as bigger with weakened functions. In this stage, we call it asymptomatic heart failure.
In the later stage, the heart's compensatory capacity can no longer regulate cardiac output to a stable and sufficient level. The patient appears to have symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, chest tightness, and edema in the lower limbs. This is called decompensated heart failure.
Dysfunction in blood circulation: Dysfunction is the main hazard of heart failure. During that, the heart's ejection function is weakened, and the blood pumped by the heart is insufficient to power blood circulation. Then tissues and organs cannot function well, caused by ischemia and hypoxia. Finally, the patient may be attacked by pump failure.
Arrhythmia: Heart failure may also result in severe arrhythmia. Patients with severe arrhythmia appear to have irregular heartbeats and disordered blood pumping, which may bring about decreased pumped blood and thrombus. In this way, the patients are prone to be attacked by stroke. If the arrhythmia continues to deteriorate, the patients may be attacked by ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, and even sudden death caused by severe cardiac arrest.
Physiological causes: psychentonia, severe emotional fluctuations, impotence, excessive strong tea or coffee intake, alcoholism, and heavy smoking.
Cardiac causes: most arrhythmias are caused by the lesion of the cardiac conduction system; arrhythmias can also be secondary to many organic cardiac diseases, including hypertension, coronary heart disease, acute myocardial infarction, cardiomyopathy, myocarditis, rheumatic heart disease, and cardiac failure.
Other causes: water, electrolyte, and acid-base disturbances and systemic diseases, such as endocrine diseases, nervous system diseases, metabolic diseases, and injuries.
Drug therapies with a healthy lifestyle. Nevertheless, heart failure is a pertinacious illness to be cured because even a well-developed and fully-performed treatment may not improve the patient's pathogenetic conditions and symptoms.
Non-drug therapies, including cardiac resynchronization therapy, cardioverter defibrillator, conduction system pacing, and left ventricular assist device.
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