Category: Congestive Heart Failure

Surviving Congestive Heart Failure

Surviving Disease – Atrial Fibrillation

Atrial Fibrillation. Many people have heard about Atrial Fibrillation. Even so, I hope you continue to read about this relatively common heart disease, which can be unpleasant. Moreover, if not treated, it can be life-threatening in some circumstances.  Causes are too many to mention (a thousand), but the big ones are: Congenital heart diseases and athletes with predisposition to heart disease. Wow, Athletes! I had a patient in his 20s who had something called Wolff Parkinson White syndrome which is a serious congenital defect with atrial fibrillation. I was glad he told his doctor how he was feeling and we did identify an abnormality on his ECG for something referred to as a delta wave. Something subtle that can be easily missed. If you remember, my father had heart disease, most likely due to smoking and being overweight. He had a heart attack, mitral valve disease, and congestive heart failure...

Surviving Congestive Heart Failure (CHF)

I should start with a definition by the American Heart Association (AHA):  “Heart failure can progress, so researchers have identified four stages of the disease — A, B, C and D. Health care professionals also classify heart failure when it has progressed to stages C and D. This classification measures a patient’s overall heart function and severity of symptoms”. There are further definitions based on classes ( I- IV). I encourage people to go to the AHA website to get more information, I have added the website to my resource page.  I need to add that there is not just one kind of heart failure: As I mentioned in the previous post my father had a degree of heart failure after his heart attack. A portion of his heart was not contracting well from the damage to the muscle on the bottom left side of his heart and possibly some...