CHF

[lak]

How is CHF diagnosed? What is the basic criteria to warrant a diagnosis of Congestive Heart Failure?

[Dr Santos]

Hi,
How are you? The diagnosis of congestive heart failure is most often a clinical one. This includes the patient's complete medical history,  physical examination, and selected laboratory tests such as ECG, chest x-ray and nuclear medicine studies which assess the overall pumping capability of the heart and examine the possibility of inadequate blood flow to the heart muscle. Heart catheterization may also be done to visualize the arteries to the heart with angiography. The choice of tests actually depends on each patient's case and is based on the suspected diagnoses. I hope this helps. Take care and best regards.

[gmachris518]

I'm not a doctor, so I don't have all of the answers, but I don't think they do either, so with that said, in my situation CHF was characterized with extreme swelling in my lower body, starting at liver level.  If I cut myself anywhere below the liver, I didn't usually bleed, but the area simply weeped with a clear fluid, and took a very long time to heal.  I noticed having great difficulty with walking, or standing, and my energy level was extremely low.  Every step felt like I was trying to move several pounds of sands(my legs).  The hardest, and most dangerous part of CHF is the lungs filling up with fluid and not being able to breathe.  I went through all kinds of symptoms, but the ones listed were the worst.

At one point, about 2 1/2 years into my CHF, I went through a period where my lungs starting filling up, and by the time someone listened to me, I had to spend a lot of time in the hospital, on mega doses of lasix, and albuterol just to get back to where I could take a breath of air.

I've had CHF for 3 years, and will most likely die with it, since I need a heart and kidney to live, and with the heart problem they don't want to give me a kidney, and with the kidney problem they don't want to give me a heart, so I muddle through, take my medication, and hope for the best.

If you, or someone you know has CHF syptoms, whether they actually have it or not, they should be checked out, and perhaps treated, because if it's let go unchecked, the outcome is drowning in their own body fluids.

Good luck....