PATHOPHYSIOLOGY OF CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE

PATHOPHYSIOLOGY OF CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE:  In congestive heart failure, the heart muscle fails to contract sufficiently to pump blood throughout the body.  This makes blood retained in the venous system and in the pulmonary circulation.  It therefore turns out that the blood that would return to the heart from the venous system is retained and the blood that would return from the lungs to the left heart side is not delivered to sufficiency.  The insufficient delivery of blood to the starving tissues does not only affect the body organs but also, the heart itself, making it not able to work more and more.  This make a compensatory mechanism of the heart muscle enlarging to generate enough energy which actually exaggerates the condition where the size of the heart becomes excessively more that the expected potential for contraction.  So in brief, there is congestion in delivery of blood versus an excessively enlarging heart with subsequent accumulation of fluids in tissues and the lungs and hence the term congestive cardiac failure.

RELATED;

1.  PATHOPHYSIOLOGY OF PEPTIC ULCER DISEASE

2.  HEART FAILURE

3.  PATHOPHYSIOLOGY OF HYPERTENSION