What are the symptoms of congestive heart failure

Patients with congestive heart failure often experience symptoms of dyspnea and fatigue, and may also experience lower limb edema and decreased exercise tolerance. Therefore, when these symptoms occur, you must be vigilant and seek timely treatment.

1. Difficulty breathing and fatigue

Most patients with heart failure seek medical attention because of decreased exercise tolerance, dyspnea, or fatigue. Severe cases may also have symptoms even when resting, and may even cause the patient to wake up at night due to suffocation.

2. Lower limb edema

People may have symptoms of fluid retention, such as swelling in the legs or abdomen, and seek medical attention as this first or only symptom. The decrease in exercise tolerance in these patients occurs gradually.

3. No symptoms or other symptoms caused by heart disease or non-heart disease

These patients are not found to have cardiac enlargement or dysfunction until they are tested for other disorders, such as acute myocardial infarction, arrhythmias, or pulmonary or somatic thromboembolic disease.

4. Early manifestations of worsening heart failure

Early signs of reduced left ventricular function are unexplained fatigue or decreased exercise tolerance and a heart rate increase of 15 to 20 beats per minute when the heart function is originally normal. If the condition continues to progress, the patient will need to use a pillow to raise the head when sleeping, experience exertional dyspnea, and paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnea. Physical examination may reveal left ventricular enlargement, early or mid-diastolic gallop rhythm, moist rales in both lungs, especially at the lung bases, and may also have dry rales and wheezing, indicating left heart dysfunction.

5. Acute pulmonary edema

The onset is acute and the disease progresses rapidly. Sudden severe dyspnea, orthopnea, irritability and fear, with a respiratory rate of 30 to 50 times per minute; frequent coughing and spitting up large amounts of pink foamy sputum; auscultation of the heart rate is fast, and a gallop rhythm can often be heard at the apex of the heart; both lungs are filled with moist rales and wheezing.