What is heart failure

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Posted By Jenis Shah

What is heart failure

Failure simply means inability to perform the given task. Now what is the task heart has to do ? Heart has to pump the blood effectively to the entire body. For that it needs a good contraction which results in pumping and an effective relaxation which results in filling of blood. Understand that heart has to first relax effectively to fill itself with blood only then it can pump that blood to the rest of the body. So in order to pump blood it has to do a good relaxation and a good contraction. 

So your heart is failing if it is not able to perform either of these functions. If pumping is weak we call it systolic heart failure where heart function goes down to less than 40% (like pumping 20% or 25%). When heart becomes stiff then relaxation is impaired resulting in impaired filling of heart which is called diastolic heart failure (stiff/rigid heart). In diastolic heart failure heart pumping is absolutely normal or even higher like 75-80%, despite that heart is not able to pump enough blood because it was not full and was not having enough blood to pump. So heart can fail when it is weak and it may also fail with normal pumping as well because of its stiffness. 

So now when you know what is heart failure and what are its type, I expect you take a good care of your heart and that of your near and dear ones :)