Recognising heart failure symptoms

Training patients and their families to recognise the signs of heart failure will help to minimise treatment delay, reduce complications, and may save lives, according to researchers.

Heart failure is a condition in which the heart can’t pump enough blood throughout the body.

Speaking at a recent European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress, researchers from the University Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland said that patients with heart failure and their families can help to improve prognosis if they are taught to recognise the tell-tale signs of worsening heart failure and seek immediate medical help.

“Better identification of symptoms – and thus their more appropriate treatment – have brought about a 40-50% reduction in mortality rates in a short time,” the researchers said.

“Shortness of breath is by far the most common presenting symptom, and families should recognise that it can be described in various ways, including ‘suffocation’, ‘tight chest’ and ‘heavy breathing’,” they said.

Heart failure patients and their families should be on the alert for any evidence of symptoms including:
• Shortness of breath (found to be evident in 92% of acute heart failure patients)
• Swelling of lower limbs called peripheral oedema (in 35% of patients)
• Cough (in 33% of patients)
• Breathing difficulty when lying flat (in 30% of patients)
• Chest pain (in 29% of patients)
• Fatigue (in 17% of patients)
• Palpitations (in 7% of patients)

A recent study found that patients hospitalised with acute heart failure had experienced considerable delays in seeking medical care (with an average delay time of 13.3 hours).

“This is why it is so important to instruct patients and their families how to recognise the symptoms of acute heart failure, to seek medical help without losing critical time of hours or even days before appropriate treatment can be started,” the researchers said.

For more on heart disease, visit Heart.ie.

[Posted: Tue 02/06/2009]