Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Congestive Heart Failure Life Expectancy

What you should know about congestive heart failure life expectancy? Before talking about life expectancy, you may need to know about what congestive heart failure is! You should clearly understand that it doesn’t mean the stopped working of the heart. But it is often referred to the weaker condition of the heart’s pumping power.

You may also like to know more about congestive heart failure diet and treatment -- before continuing!

It can cause the movement of blood through the body and heart at slower rate, and on the other hand the pressure increases in the heart. And if this condition continuing can cause poor performance of the heart to pump nutrients and O2 to meet your body’s requirements, which eventually will lead to the fluid builds up in the lungs, ankles, legs, feet, arms, or other organs (if these conditions are present, the body become congested or familiar known as ‘congestive heart failure’ to describe these conditions).

Heart failure stages

One of popular related issues when talking about congestive heart failure life expectancy is heart failure stages.

The table below is taken from a published article on WEBMD (classified by ACC (the American College of Cardiology) and AHA (the American Heart Association) -- ‘updated in 2005’), which can be a helpful guide for you as a basic plan of care that ‘may not apply’ or ‘may apply’ to your heart condition. In many cases, you only have forward in stage (in other words, you cannot go backward)! 

Table source: © WEBMD
For more detailed information and advices, ‘don’t forget to talk with your doctor’ (especially about a certain therapy that you should choose)!

Congestive heart failure life expectancy!

Life expectancy of heart failure is closely dependent on how severe of the heart’s condition and treatments. In several cases, individuals with congestive heart failure may be died within ten years of the disease being diagnosed.

One thing you should clearly understand that the treatment of heart failure is a team effort, and the patient is the vital player on the team! Other members of the team may include doctors, nurses, dietitians, social workers, exercise specialists, and pharmacists -- but always keep in mind that if you have heart failure then the success of the treatment with your team is ‘up to YOU’ to make dietary changes, be an active member of your team, keep your good healthy lifestyles, take your medications, and keep focus to the follow-up appointments!

You still can enjoy with heart failure -- with the right care! The outlook or prognosis for the future is closely dependent on the progress of your body to respond the treatment plan, the development of your symptoms, and the progress of how well muscles in your heart!

In addition, other ideas to improve the quality of your life with heart failure may include: get external support like a physiological support if necessary, take the medications properly as prescribed, get regular exercise (talk with your exercise specialist or doctor to get the right advices for this point), keep your healthy diet, and don’t forget to ask about pneumonia & flu vaccines if necessary to prevent respiratory infections!

-- Image credit to ‘Getty Images' for illustration