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Symptoms and signs of heart failure |
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Symptoms and signs of heart failure
Heart failure symptoms can be vague and can easily attributed to other causes. This often leads to mis-diagnosis and/or late diagnosis of heart failure and the reason why 80% of people are diagnosed in hospital.
Symptoms
Typical
- Breathlessness ;
- Orthopnoea ;
- Paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnoea ;
- Reduced exercise tolerance ;
- Fatigue, tiredness, increased time to recover after exercise;
- Ankle swelling;
Less typical
- Nocturnal cough ;
- Wheezing ;
- Bloated feeling ;
- Loss of appetite ;
- Confusion (especially in the elderly) ;
- Depression ;
- Palpitation ;
- Dizziness ;
- Syncope Tachycardia; and
- Bendopnea.
Signs
More specific
- Elevated jugular venous pressure;
- Hepatojugular reflux;
- Third heart sound (gallop rhythm) ; and
- Laterally displaced apical impulse.
Less typical
- Weight gain (>2 kg/week);
- Weight loss (in advanced HF);
- Tissue wasting (cachexia);
- Cardiac murmur;
- Peripheral oedema (ankle, sacral, scrotal);
- Pulmonary crepitations;
- Pleural effusion;
- Tachycardia;
- Irregular pulse;
- Tachypnoea;
- Cheyne-Stokes respiration;
- Hepatomegaly;
- Ascites;
- Cold extremities;
- Oliguria; and
- Narrow pulse pressure.
Source: ESC Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic heart failure. European Heart Journal (2021) 42, 3599; 3726
doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehab368.
doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehab368.
Contents:
- Detection
- Diagnosis
- Acute Heart Failure: Diagnosis and management
- Chronic heart failure: Management and treatment
- Discharge and follow-up
- Palliative and psychological care
- Digital support
In this section
- Detection - Home
- Rationale for detection
- Settings and opportunities
- Symptoms
- Chronic conditions and risk factors
- Undetected HF in GP registers
- Screening
- Resources for detection
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(c) British Society for Heart Failure, 2022-
