Shortness of
breath linked to heart failure
Washington:
Do you often experience shortness of breath when bending over to put on shoes?
Beware, it may be a telltale sign of heart failure.
Researchers
from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have defined a novel
heart failure symptom in advanced heart failure patients: shortness of breath
while bending over, such as when putting on shoes.
The
condition, named "bendopnea", is an easily detectable symptom that
can help doctors diagnose excessive fluid retention in patients with heart
failure, researchers said.
"Some
patients thought they were short of breath because they were out of shape or
overweight, but we wondered if there was something more to it. So we developed
this study to further investigate this symptom," said Dr Jennifer
Thibodeau, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine in the Division of
Cardiology.
Thibodeau,
first author of the study, cautioned that bendopnea is not a risk factor for
heart failure, but rather a symptom that heart failure patients are becoming
sicker and may need to have their medications or treatments adjusted.
Bendopnea
is a way for both doctors and patients to recognise something may be amiss with
their current heart failure treatment. Patients should speak with their
cardiologist or health care provider if they experience bendopnea, said
Thibodeau.
UT
Southwestern doctors enrolled 102 patients who were referred to the cardiac
catheterisation lab for right heart catheterisation and found that nearly
one-third of the subjects had bendopnea.
When
the patients were lying flat, clinicians measured both the pressures within the
heart as well as the cardiac output - how well the heart is pumping blood to
the rest of the body - in all 102 patients.
Then,
they repeated these measurements in 65 patients after they were sitting in a
chair for two minutes, and then bending over for one minute.
"We
discovered that patients with bendopnea had too much fluid in their bodies,
causing elevated pressures, and when they bent forward, these pressures
increased even more," said Thibodeau.
The
findings were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology:
Heart Failure.
21.03.2014
Maternal
cardiac arrest more common than reported: Study
New
York: Maternal cardiac arrest, which means that the mother's heart stops
beating either before or after childbirth, may be two times more common than
previously reported, research shows.
The
study, based on data for more than 56 million births, also found that the
survival rate improved in US between 1998 and 2011.
A
number of health issues that may occur during childbirth can lead to cardiac
arrest, including excessive bleeding, heart failure, heart attack,
preeclampsia, blood infection and amniotic fluid embolism, where amniotic fluid
enters the mother's bloodstream.
These
issues can cause irregular heart rhythms, or reduced blood flow and oxygen to
the heart (heart attack); either problem can cause cardiac arrest, the research
showed.
"These
are rare high-stakes events on obstetric units, and team preparation is
critical to ensure that everyone is ready to act quickly and effectively,"
said Jill M. Mhyre, associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of
Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Using
data from the US government's Nationwide Inpatient Sample - the largest
all-payer inpatient health care database in the US - researchers identified
4,843 cardiac arrest events among 56,900,512 hospitalisations for childbirth, a
rate of one in 11,749.
The
main causes of cardiac arrest included bleeding (44.7 percent), heart failure
(13.3 percent), amniotic fluid embolism (13.3 percent) and blood infection, or
sepsis, (11.2 percent).
"This
information will assist health care providers to deliver the most effective
maternal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) when both the mother's and baby's
lives are on the line," Mhyre said.
The
study appeared in the journal Anesthesiology.
21.03.2014
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