Congestive Heart Failure

[nncyzimm]

My 78 year old mother is suffering from CHF.  Her last echo showed:
Normal sized left ventricle with calcified pappillary muscle and concentric hypertrophy, normal systolic function
Right Ventricle enlarged
Biatrial enlargement
Severe tricuspid regurgitation with pulmonary hypertesnion
Calcified mitral and aortic valve leaflet with mitral annular calcification
left ventricle ejection fraction 65%
velocity across aortic valve 1.9 m/sec with pressure gradient 14mmHg
SHe reuqires oxygen and is very weak. She is in a wheelchair and cannot walk. She also has diabetes and blood disorder.  Her doctor will not give us any information relative to her outlook.  She frequently is quite swollen and we think it is the end of her life and then she bounces back.  never great but she gets slightly better.  Is she in end stage CHF, how will we know

[kenkeith]

It is difficult to determine end stage, but generally it involves pulmonary edema (fluids in the lungs), shortness of breath with very little exertion.  Often the heart's left ventricle enlarges and that can/will cause arrhythmia and cardiac arrest.  At the present time your mother has a strong contractility of the left ventricle that pumps 65% of the filling capacity....it appears from the enlarged right ventricle, etc. that your mother may have right side failure which means although there is good pumping contractility the right side is not pumping enough blood to lungs and therefore there is less filling prior to pumping and the system is not getting a very good supply of blood and that can explain shortness of breath, etc.