The importance of early diagnosis and treatment
“Another big part of my practice is the diagnosis and treatment of heart failure. Professor Chris Barnard famously said, “The heart is but a pump” but if the pumping action of the heart is negatively affected by hypertension, previous heart attacks, valvular problems etc. it is crucial to make the diagnosis as early as possible in order to intervene with pharmacological therapy.”
Diagnosis & Treatment of Heart Failure
- Excessive tiredness as well as shortness of breath
- Effort intolerance
- Peripheral oedema
- Sleeping on more pillows than one was previously used to
- Waking up at night with shortness of breath
- Unreasonable weight gain
It is very important to realise that the quicker one intervenes with pharmacotherapy, in a patient with heart failure, the better the outcome. It is also very important to control all medications that patients might be on as well as the possible interactions between drugs. Every patient will be asked to submit a full list of the drugs that they are currently taking, as well as side effects that they might have experienced when taking other drugs.
In our heart failure patients, we do an Echo (sonar/ultrasound investigation of the heart) to determine the diameter of the chambers, the contractility of the heart which we express in the ejection fraction, the anatomy and function of all 4 heart valves, the anatomy of the pericardium surrounding the heart and any fluid which it might contain. In some patients, it is necessary to do more investigations, like a cardiac MRI and, in some patients, angiography is necessary to rule out obstructive coronary artery disease as a cause for heart failure.