Common Characteristics of Congestive Heart Failure
The heart is among the most durable of our organs. In the course of an average lifetime, the heart beats
an estimated three billion times. Over the years, this labor produces some wear-and-tear changes in the
heart's structure. But such changes--which come with normal aging--are quite different from congestive
heart failure. Heart failure--a breakdown in the heart's ability to pump blood--is usually produced by
disease. While it occasionally occurs suddenly, it more typically emerges slowly and insidiously over time.
As the heart fails, circulation becomes impaired, producing a succession of increasingly painful and often
disabling symptoms, which are highly treatable, but can result in death if uncorrected.
Causes of Congestive Heart Failure
The normal heart is usually able to meet any temporary extra demand by simply beating faster and more
vigorously. Jogging, swimming and other physical exercise, for example, create extra burdens that any
healthy heart can respond to immediately and with ease. The danger arises when a burden becomes continuous
or excessive, as in cases of sustained high blood pressure (hypertension), where the effort to keep
pushing blood through inelastic blood vessels so overtaxes the heart that it begins to fail. Any local
insult to the muscle of the heart, such as would result from a blockage in a coronary artery (a heart attack),
can weaken the strength of the heart's contraction and thus produce heart failure. Heart failure can also
result from damage or a structural change in one of the heart valves, which may have been caused by rheumatic
fever or a bacterial infection and may lead to internal obstruction or to valvular leakage.
Even disorders that are not directly related to cardiac function can result in heart failure. A case in point
is severe anemia, a problem that decreases the blood's oxygen supply and may dangerously overwork the heart
by forcing it to circulate under-oxygenated blood around the body at an increasingly exhausting pace. Severe
vitamin B deficiency has also been implicated in heart failure, as has a hyperactive thyroid. In an already
weakened heart, chronic infection with recurrent fever may also produce heart failure.
