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Six Signs Of Heart Failure You Might Not Expect - Almost One Million Britons At Risk
The signs and symptoms of heart failureThe heart is one of our most important organs, responsible for pumping blood around the body.
Therefore, any damage to the heart can prove fatal.
Heart failure occurs after long-term damage to the organ, often the culmination of various conditions such as heart disease and high blood pressure.
This leaves the heart weakened and stiff, meaning it is no longer able to move blood around.
It doesn't mean the heart has stopped working but it will need support to continue to do so.
Therefore, any signs of heart failure should be immediately investigated.
There are some symptoms that are to be expected.
These include things such as chest pain and a rapid or irregular heartbeat.
However, there are some signs that may not be so obvious.
According to the Mayo Clinic heart failure can cause:
If you experience these signs you should speak with your GP.
Other, more obvious, symptoms include:
However, if you experience any of the following you should call 999:
It is thought there are around 60,000 new cases of heart failure diagnosed in the UK every year, with 900,000 people in total affected by the condition.
These are predominantly among older people over the age of 75, but it can affect people of any age.
There are a number of health conditions that can lead to heart failure.
These include:
The NHS adds: "Sometimes obesity, anaemia, drinking too much alcohol, an overactive thyroid or high pressure in the lungs (pulmonary hypertension) can also lead to heart failure."
TreatmentThere is no cure for heart failure, however, there are treatments available to help keep symptoms under control that can prove successful for many years - quite possibly for the rest of your life.
These include:
For many people a combination of treatments will be required.
Covid-19 Linked With Higher Risk Of High Blood Pressure, Study Finds
CNN —
When it comes to developing high blood pressure, Covid-19 might play an outsized role, a new study says.
The report, published Monday in the medical journal Hypertension, found that more than 1 in 5 patients who were hospitalized with Covid-19 – and over 1 in 10 who were not – had been diagnosed with high blood pressure six months later. Compared with people who had influenza, another upper respiratory virus, those hospitalized with Covid-19 were over twice as likely to develop hypertension.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, the leading causes of death in the United States. Nearly half of the adults in the nation have hypertension, and in 2021, the CDC says, it caused nearly 700,000 deaths in the United States.
The threshold for hypertension can sometimes vary by doctor, but the most recent guidelines from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology define it as a reading of 130 over 90.
In the new study, the researchers looked at the medical records of over 45,000 Covid-19 patients and nearly 14,000 influenza patients in the Bronx borough of New York City between 2020 and 2022. Before their viral infection, none of the patients had a history of hypertension. At a six-month follow-up appointment, the researchers then tracked which ones had new diagnoses of the heart condition.
Across the board, people who were hospitalized with Covid-19 were diagnosed with hypertension at about twice the rate of those who were not: About 21% of hospitalized Covid-19 patients were hypertensive, compared with 11% who were not hospitalized.
Of the hospitalized Covid-19 patients, more than 1 in 5 developed hypertension during their time in the hospital, while actively infected with Covid-19, despite having no history of high blood pressure.
However, in comparison with patients who were infected with the flu, Covid-19 patients had worse blood pressure outcomes.
Covid-19 patients who had been hospitalized were 2.23 times as likely to develop high blood pressure as hospitalized influenza patients. Even Covid-19 patients who weren't in the hospital were over 50% more likely than nonhospitalized flu patients to develop hypertension.
The high incidence of hypertension in people with Covid-19 is "alarming given the sheer number of people affected by COVID-19," the report says.
The researchers found hypertension to be more common in a few key demographic groups. People who were over 40 years old, were Black or had pre-existing conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), coronary artery disease or chronic kidney disease were at a higher risk of developing hypertension after a Covid-19 infection.
Patients who were treated with vasopressor medications, a class of drugs that constrict vessels to raise blood pressure, or corticosteroids, a type of anti-inflammatory drug often used to treat arthritis, were also at a higher risk.
"Given the sheer number of people affected by COVID-19 compared to influenza, these statistics are alarming and suggest that many more patients will likely develop high blood pressure in the future, which may present a major public health burden," Dr. Tim Duong, a study author and professor of radiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said in a news release.
But scientists are unsure how the Covid-19 virus might trigger new-onset high blood pressure. The study theorizes that the coronavirus could infect heart cells and disrupt blood pressure regulation or that acute kidney injury – a common complication during Covid-19 hospitalization – might contribute to hypertension.
The report also noted that most of the people in the study came from communities with low socioeconomic status, which might have increased their risk of developing high-blood pressure. Risk factors linked with poverty, including stress and reduced access to healthy food, might have raised rates of hypertension.
As a result, the report said, longer-term follow-up research would be useful to track whether heightened blood pressure can be more closely linked to Covid-19 and, if so, what the long-term heart health effects might be. For now, the data could tip doctors off to the link between Covid-19 and hypertension.
"These findings should heighten awareness to screen at-risk patients for hypertension after COVID-19 illness to enable earlier identification and treatment for hypertension-related complications, such as cardiovascular and kidney disease," Duong said.
COVID-19 May Trigger New-onset High Blood Pressure In High Risk Individuals
New research suggests that people who have had COVID-19 are more likely to develop hypertension, even with no prior history of high blood pressure.
The findings were published today in Hypertension, a journal of the American Heart Association.
In an analysis of six-month follow-up data from more than 45,000 people who had COVID-19, researchers reported that 21% of people who were hospitalized for the virus and 11% who were not hospitalized later developed high blood pressure.
While similar effects happen with influenza – a similar respiratory infection – the numbers were higher across the board for people who've had COVID-19, the researchers reported.
Tim Q. Duong, a senior study author and a professor of radiology and vice chair for radiology research and associate director of Integrative Imaging and Data Science at the Center for Health and Data Innovation at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Health System in New York City, told Medical News Today that the findings could be a sign of what's to come for the millions of people worldwide who've had COVID-19.
"Infection may trigger new-onset hypertension or exacerbate preexisting hypertension long after acute infection has resolved," he explained. "It is important to determine whether SARS-CoV-2 infection increases incidence of new-onset persistent hypertension in patients who had COVID-19, as it could constitute a major long-term population health issue."
The data analyzed in the study comes from the New York metropolitan area, specifically the Bronx – an area with significant lower socioeconomic status.
Duong explained that higher-risk groups include older adults, men, and Black Americans. While increased risk among older adults was expected, the findings provide important new data when it comes to understanding how so-called "long COVID" affects the body.
"This is the first study to show that male COVID patients are more susceptible to developing new hypertension as part of long COVID," Duong said. "It's also the first study to show that African-Americans with COVID-19 are more susceptible to developing new hypertension. The reasons that these groups or populations have increased risks are multifactorial."
Caveats to the data include the fact that participant data was limited to people who had interacted with the healthcare system. This means that the many people who had COVID-19 without seeing a doctor were not represented, so the findings skew toward those who had more severe cases.
While the findings indicate that COVID-19 is associated with the development of high blood pressure that wasn't there before, there are also a host of preexisting conditions that made the risk higher.
Those in the study who had conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary artery disease, or chronic kidney disease, were more likely than others to develop high blood pressure.
Emily E. Volk, the president of the College of American Pathologists, vice president of Pathology and Clinical Laboratories for the University of Louisville Health System in Kentucky, and an associate professor of pathology at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, said that blood clotting abnormalities have been observed in many people with COVID-19, which in turn carries an increased risk of heart attack and stroke.
"With any organ in the body that doesn't get the appropriate amount of blood flow, the arterial capillaries feeding it will die and then create more, which leads to a cycle of more inflammation," Volk, who was not involved in the study, told Medical News Today. "It really can create quite a cycle of destruction. It's interesting to me that high blood pressure – which is fundamentally an abnormality in the vasculature – would be associated with some patients with long COVID. There may very well be a link there."
One of the major challenges associated with the pandemic, right from the start, has been a lack of information.
As a new virus, health professionals have been playing catch-up from the start and understanding the long-term effects of COVID-19 remains a work in progress.
Still, in the more than three years since the virus was first identified, experts say significant breakthroughs have been made.
"It's been remarkable exponential growth in our understanding, and frankly, the fact that the scientific community was able to isolate the virus and then create vaccines for the virus so quickly and so effectively, is remarkable," said Volk. "It really is a testament to where we have advanced in our understanding of molecular biology, neurology, and immunology."
Symptoms of COVID-19, and long COVID, are all over the map, but some commonalities have been identified. Volk said that there are many non-specific symptoms that are hard to localize and one major complaint has been headaches or "brain fog."
"For some patients, this can really interfere with their ability to function out in the world," she explained. "I think fatigue is one thing, but when you are finding it difficult to do your daily activities, your daily living, because you're not able to think clearly or do your job that you were previously competent at, I think that's very frightening to patients."
Because these symptoms are tough to pin down and treat, Volk recommends that people exercise persistence and patience with their doctors.
"It's really a diagnosis of exclusion because the symptoms are often non-specific," she said. "Job one of that patient's physician is going to be sorting out whether there are other possible causes for the symptoms, because you can't assume from the start that it's all due to COVID-19. That's the hard work that the physician has to sort through with the patient."
She added that it's also important, as always, to get vaccinated and or boosted for respiratory infections such as influenza and COVID-19, especially with colder weather and flu season right around the corner.
"If there's anybody out there who hasn't gotten the COVID-19 vaccine, it might be a good time to reconsider," said Volk. "Kids are going back to school and we're all going to be heading back inside for the fall and winter. If you haven't done it yet, it's OK. Anybody who can get vaccinated, we would be happy to vaccinate."
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