Heart failure, sometimes called congestive heart failure, prevents your heart from pumping blood efficiently into the arteries, resulting in poor blood flow to your body’s cells.
Insufficient blood and oxygen supply to the cells will expose the person with heart failure to serious problems that affect his or her survival and longevity. But
How much is heart failure life expectancy? In this article, we will answer this important and common question.
what you will read next :
- Types of heart failure
- What is heart failure?
- Is there a definitive cure for heart failure?
- How does heart failure progress?
- What changes does our body make to use the little blood that comes out of a defective heart?
- How is the severity of heart failure determined?
- Who is most at risk for heart failure?
- Symptoms of heart failure
- Treatment of heart failure
- Heart failure life expectancy
- Individual differences in heart failure
- Causes of death in patients with chronic heart failure or CHF
- The final word
Types of heart failure
Heart failure is usually classified into the following categories:
- Left sided heart failure:
- Systolic heart failure (when the heart muscle is contracting)
- Diastolic heart failure (when the heart muscle is relaxing)
- Right sided heart failure
- congestive heart failure:
Congestive heart failure is often considered to be the main cause of heart failure. For this reason, we will talk more about congestive heart failure in the following
What is heart failure?
We use the term heart failure when the heart cannot pump blood into the arteries properly, the life of every single cell in our body depends on oxygen and substances that reach them through the bloodstream. In people with heart failure, different parts of the body due to reduced blood flow and insufficient oxygen supply, serious problems and the feeling of fatigue will be a common symptom for a person with heart failure.
Performing routine daily activities such as walking, etc., gradually become very difficult as the severity of heart failure progresses.
Is there a definitive cure for heart failure?
A failed heart will not fully recover and is a life-threatening problem that not only goes untreated but also progresses over time. The heart of a person with mild failure (the first stage of heart failure) will eventually become so weak and dysfunctional that it will lead to death. However, in some stages, the quality of life can be maintained to some extent by using standard treatments for heart failure.
How does heart failure progress?
When your heart becomes dysfunctional, it first makes three changes to compensate for this weakness:
- Increases the diameter of the heart muscle:
To increase its power in pumping blood
- Heart size increases:
The heart tries to compensate for its weakness as it grows
- The heart pumps blood faster than before:
To increase the speed of blood pumping, to compensate for the problem of oxygen supply and blood supply to cells.
What changes does our body make to use the little blood that comes out of a defective heart?
- In order to keep the brain and heart alive, the body directs blood from other organs of the body, such as the kidneys, to the brain and heart.
- The body’s arteries narrow to maintain blood pressure to pump blood.
With all of these compensatory measures, heart failure is a progressive chronic disorder that progresses to the point where all of these compensatory changes become completely useless.
The body of a person with heart failure may be asymptomatic for a long time due to these compensatory changes, so here it is necessary to see a doctor regularly and have a check-up.
How is the severity of heart failure determined?
Two types of classifications are used to describe how defective a person’s heart is:
- A classification related to the patient’s history (Patient symptom)
- A classification performed by a physician (Objective Assessment)
Who is most at risk for heart failure?
Risk factors for heart failure include:
Coronary artery disease: (is the most common and major risk factor)
- High blood pressure
- Have a recent history of heart attack
- Congenital heart disease
- History of heart muscle disorders (cardiomyopathies)
- History of cardiac arrhythmias (such as atrial fibrillation)
- Anemia (anemia)
- alcohol consumption
- Hyperthyroidism
- Increased pulmonary hypertension
Symptoms of heart failure
Heart failure is often accompanied by the following symptoms:
- Weakness and fatigue
- Shortness of breath: (mostly when increasing physical activity or when lying down and sleeping)
- Fast heart rate
- Irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia)
- Chronic cough
- Sputum cough stained !! with blood vessels
- Decreased ability of the sufferer to perform sports activities
Treatment of heart failure
There are four stages of heart failure to be determined by your doctor (stages A, B, C, D)
Treatment of heart failure is chosen according to the stage at which the patient is.
Although treatments cannot cure heart failure, they can be helpful in maintaining your quality of life.
Treatment options for heart failure include:
- Lifestyle changes
- medicines
- Embedding devices
- Invasive procedures include surgeries
Heart failure life expectancy
According to the fact that heart failure is a chronic and progressive disorder, the question may arise, how survival and life expectancy are in heart failure?
How long will a person with heart failure survive?
What will be the outlook and prognosis of the patients?
It is true that advanced heart failure can severely limit your daily activities or even can be fatal, but the individual circumstances of each patient are not unaffected by the progression of heart failure.
For example, some people with heart failure deteriorate rapidly, while others can live in relatively stable conditions for years.
As a sufferer, you will play a very important role in creating a quality life after heart failure. Plan new and healthy eating habits for yourself, have a deep emotional relationship with your spouse, children and friends, and exercise appropriately. Use the help and cooperation of the support team.
Numerous studies have been done to assess heart failure life expectancy; a comprehensive study says that about 50% of people with heart failure will live more than five years after diagnosis.
Individual differences in heart failure
Lifestyle and lifestyle changes play a big role in survival, but it is not possible to determine the exact life expectancy for all patients with heart failure. In addition, the survival time of people who are on different stages is completely different and even people on the same stage have different lives due to different individual characteristics.
Ninety percent of people with severe heart failure (reduced blood flow to the heart); usually in the next year, will die
Causes of death in patients with chronic heart failure or CHF
Ninety percent of deaths from heart failure are due to cardiovascular problems:
Fifty percent of these people die from advanced heart failure
The remaining percentage of people also die from other heart problems such as ischemic heart attacks (coronary artery disease) and cardiac arrhythmias.
The final word
Heart failure will require long-term management. In the early stages of heart failure, with proper treatment and care, the progression of the failure can be delayed and living conditions improved.
Appropriate treatments will reduce the risk of sudden death in heart failure patients and increase their survival.
Finally, we need to know that heart failure does not mean the end of life.