Heart failure - often symptoms such as tiredness and breathlessness

Patients with heart failure often suffer from unspecific symptoms: fatigue or general physical weakness may well be caused by heart failure. In advanced stages, patients may also experience shortness of breath even with little exertion or even at rest.

Water retention in the legs or lungs (pulmonary oedema) are also typical signs of cardiac insufficiency. In the past, the term "dropsy" was also used in connection with a weak heart due to the swollen, fluid-filled tissue of those affected. Heart failure can occur acutely, e.g. as part of a heart attack, or chronically, i.e. slowly creeping.

Our heart has to perform constantly - if it no longer pumps properly due to weakness, this leads to an undersupply of oxygen-saturated blood to the body. Without the right treatment, heart failure (cardiac decompensation) can have serious consequences, both for the heart itself and for the surrounding organs.

There are various causes of heart failure: Sometimes this is due to high blood pressure that has not been recognised for years - in other cases, arteriosclerosis, i.e. a narrowing of the blood vessels due to the accumulation of cholesterol and other fats, leads to reduced blood flow to the heart muscle. This is referred to as coronary heart disease, CHD, as the cause. A heart defect such as a narrow aortic valve or inflammation of the heart muscle can also cause heart failure.

Contact us in good time if you have the feeling that something is wrong with your heart - our internal medicine specialists at Bethesda Hospital are always ready to listen to you.

The treatment of heart failure primarily depends on the cause. In most cases, the therapy consists of a combination of different medications, which must be optimally dosed. Thanks to our many years of experience, we at the Department of Internal Medicine at Bethesda Hospital are able to recognise heart failure and also treat it with medication in accordance with the latest recommendations - as gently and at the same time as efficiently as possible.

To clarify the causes, we work closely and trustingly with the cardiology department of the University Hospital Basel, which operates a branch on the Bethesda campus (Karamba). We also carry out ultrasound examinations of the heart there and our patients are directly assessed by the heart specialists at Karamba. Your attending physician will be happy to tell you more about this successful collaboration.

As breathlessness is a non-specific symptom and there are many other possible causes besides cardiac insufficiency, you should contact a doctor or us as soon as possible if you experience new breathlessness or worsening of existing breathlessness in order to initiate further investigations and start a customised therapy. Shortness of breath is a symptom to be taken seriously, so act quickly.

If left untreated, existing heart failure often worsens over weeks and months. However, if the cause is circulatory disorders of the heart vessels or additional illnesses such as infections, untreated symptoms can also progress rapidly, sometimes with dramatic deterioration. With targeted and customised therapy, the progression of the disease can be halted and the symptoms often even completely reduced.

The reduction in pumping capacity, particularly in the left ventricle, means that the blood can no longer always circulate through the body as it should. This leads to congestion in the lungs, where more fluid escapes and causes shortness of breath.

If the right ventricle in particular is affected by weakness, fluid accumulates in the dependent half of the body, e.g. in the abdomen or legs.

Around 200,000 people in Switzerland suffer from heart failure. Heart failure is often accompanied by concomitant diseases such as diabetes or renal insufficiency. Every year, around 18,000 people with severe forms of this disease die.

Men are slightly more affected by the disease than women. Above all, however, it is a disease of the elderly, as heart failure occurs much more frequently after the age of 60 than at a younger age. The incidence of heart failure after the age of 60 is already over 10 per cent and increases with every year.