Questions about congestive heart failure.?!

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When people get heart failure they are not likely to recognize that that is what it actually is at first.
They wlll get symptoms that will eventually make them decide to see a doctor. For example people with heart failure may be short of breath, have swelling (edema) of their feet and ankles which gradually progresses higher up the legs. They make get short of breath lying down, but feel OK upright (that is called orthopnea). . THey may wake up suddenly in the night feeling short of breath (that is called paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnea, commonly abbreviated PND) . THey may get short of breath when they exert themselves, but feel OK when resting. They can just be very fatigued, -particularly with activity. So there are lots of different sxs.

Heart failure is not actually a disease in and of itself. It is a failure of the heart to pump sufficient blood and that can be caused by a lot of different things.
It can be due to a single large heart attack. It can be caused by a series of small heart attacks which eventually do enough permanent damage to the heart such that it cannot pump well enough.
Problems with the cardiac valves can also cause heart failure - valves can narrow down so that not enough blood can get thru them or valves can leak so that the heart has to do a lot of extra work to pump the blood forward. When the leak gets bad enough and the heart can no longer pump any harder, then heart failure occurs. It can also be caused by excessively fast or excessively slow heart rates.
These are all examples of low-output heart failure
Some medical conditions can cause the pulse to go too fast which if it gets fast enough, again the heart cannot cope - this is called high output heart failure. Examples of this would be severely hyperactive thyroid or very severe anemia. Also a problem called an A-V fistula where there is a direct connection between artery and vein (no capillaries in between), so again heart works hard and harder and eventually fails.
Once a person gets heart failure, sometimes the problem can be corrected and the heart failure will be gone unless the problem, or some other one, occurs again. For example if the person was severely anemic or had a very rapid heart rate.
Some types of heart failure however, once you have them, they are permanent since they are due to underlying structural damage to the heart muscle - for example from having a lot of heart attacks. So much heart muscle is damaged, pumping will never be normal again.
Symptoms of heart failure can be controlled, but often there will be new episodes. Some of these occur because the heart is just getting worse for some reason. Other episodes occur for reasons such as the person eating too much salt (sodium) or failing to take their medication or getting very anemic, etc., etc.
There are medications that can improve heart failure symptoms even in these cases and perhaps help prevent further damage, but nothing short of a heart transplant would ever give that individual a normal heart again.
Hope this is helpful.
THings to remember.
Heart failure is not a disease. It is a symptom of a problem.
There are many causes of heart failure.
Depending on the cause of the heart failure, treatment may be different.

Good luck in your project.