Heart Failure The American Heart Association ( Aha ) /...

In the American Heart Association (AHA)/American College of Cardiology guidelines1, heart failure (HF) is defined as a complex clinical syndrome that can result from any structural or functional cardiac disorder that impairs the ability of the ventricle to fill or eject blood. A normal healthy heart is a muscular organ with four chambers, two on the right and two on the left, that pumps blood to the lungs and rest of the body2. The two upper chambers are called atria and the two lower chambers are called ventricles. The right atria take in oxygen-poor blood from the rest of the body and sends it back out to the lungs through the right ventricle where the blood becomes oxygenated. Oxygen-rich blood travels from the lungs to the left atrium, then on to the left ventricle, which pumps it to the rest of the body. In a patient with heart failure, the heart muscle has been progressively weakened and unable to pump enough blood through to the body. There are two main types of heart fa ilure: left-sided and right-sided. In left-sided or left ventricular (LV) heart failure3, the heart fails to properly pump blood out to the body. Right-sided or right ventricular (RV) heart failure is usually triggered by LV heart failure and it’s when blood accumulates in the lungs increasing fluid pressure, damaging the heart’s right side. LV heart failure can be further classified into two types, systolic and diastolic heart failure, depending on the ejection fraction (EF). In