Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsWhat Is Heart Failure?Left-Sided Heart FailureRight-Sided Heart FailureTreatment
Table of ContentsView All
View All
Table of Contents
What Is Heart Failure?
Left-Sided Heart Failure
Right-Sided Heart Failure
Treatment
Left- and right-sidedheart failureboth occur because heart muscles are weakened, and they can’t work as effectively as before. When this happens, tissues throughout the body are deprived of oxygen and other crucial nutrients.
However, these types of heart failure differ in how the condition affects the pumping ability of the heart. The right side of the heart collects oxygen-depleted blood from the body and brings it to the lungs to be filled with fresh oxygen. The left side of the heart receives oxygen-rich blood from thelungsand sends it out to the rest of the body.
This article discusses these differences, and why left- vs. right-sided heart failure symptoms reflect specific mechanisms in heart failure. It presents information about how treatment options differ, too.
Heart failure occurs when a person’s heart can’t pump enough blood to the body. There are a number of possible causes, including certain medical conditions that can lead to heart failure. They include:
Lifestyle choices like smoking, diet, and exercise can contribute to the development of heart failure. When symptoms of heart failure emerge, they typically align with either the left-side or right-side patterns of the disease.
What Is Left-Sided Heart Failure?
Left-sided heart failure is the most common type of heart failure. According to data from the American Heart Association, in the United States alone, 6.7 million adults over age 20 were living with heart failure from to 2017 through 2020.
When it happens, your heart has lost some of its ability to pump blood out to your body after it’s been re-oxygenated. Without oxygen, tissues and organs throughout your body don’t work as well or begin to lose their function.
Congestive Heart Failure: Left-Sided Systolic
Congestive Heart Failure: Left-Sided Diastolic
Thus, left-sided heart failure can cause both respiratory symptoms and problems in the tissues or organs receiving the least amount of oxygen-rich blood.
Symptoms
Shortness of breath and fatigue are common, early symptoms of left-sided heart failure. Sudden weight gain or swelling, especially in your limbs, are usually early signs of right-sided heart failure.
The most common symptoms of left-sided heart failure include:
Left-sided heart failure is further classified as systolic or diastolic failure, according to the condition of the heart muscle.
Systolic Failure
Systolic failure, or heart failure with a reducedejection fraction, happens when the left side of the heart becomes weakened and is unable to contract with enough force to eject a sufficient amount of blood out to the body.
What Is an Ejection Fraction?An ejection fraction is a measurement, expressed as a percentage, of how much blood the left ventricle pumps out with each contraction.An ejection fraction of 60% means that 60% of the total amount of blood in the left ventricle is pushed out with each heartbeat. A normal ejection fraction is between 50% and 70%.
What Is an Ejection Fraction?
An ejection fraction is a measurement, expressed as a percentage, of how much blood the left ventricle pumps out with each contraction.An ejection fraction of 60% means that 60% of the total amount of blood in the left ventricle is pushed out with each heartbeat. A normal ejection fraction is between 50% and 70%.
Organs like thekidneysrequire a certain amount of pressure as blood flows through them to work properly. A weak pump can reduce this pressure and in turn decrease the ability of other organs, like the kidneys, to do their jobs. This is how heart failure can lead to multiple organ failure and even death.
Diastolic Failure
Diastolic heart failure is also known as heart failure with a preserved ejection fraction. In this type of heart failure, the left side of the heart has become stiff and doesn’t relax well between beats.
While the heart’s pumping ability remains strong, the walls of the heart, particularly in the left ventricle, don’t relax enough to fill the chamber with an adequate amount of blood. So while the blood is pushed out of the heart forcefully, not enough is pumped with each beat.
Systolic vs. Diastolic Heart Failure
What Is Right-Sided Heart Failure?
In right-sided heart failure, the heart loses some of its ability to move oxygen-depleted blood to the lungs to pick up new oxygen. Blood enters the right atrium from the body and flows to the right ventricle, which pumps the blood through the pulmonary artery to the lungs and the left side of the heart.
Congestive Heart Failure: Right-Sided Systolic
As the left side of the heart loses its ability to pump blood out to the body, blood backs up into the right side of the heart. The right side of the heart then has to work harder, compensating for the weakness in the left side.
This heavier workload can lead to right-sided heart failure. However, right-sided heart failure can also occur even when the left side of the heart is apparently normal.
Congestive Heart Failure: Right-Sided Diastolic
Causes
The causes of right-sided heart failure can include:
What if Both Sides of the Heart Fail?In severe cases or advanced heart failure, both sides of the heart can be affected. This is referred to as biventricular heart failure.
What if Both Sides of the Heart Fail?
In severe cases or advanced heart failure, both sides of the heart can be affected. This is referred to as biventricular heart failure.
Heart Failure Treatment
Heart failure treatment depends primarily on what type of heart failure you have and the degree of damage that has already been done. The most important thing you can do to manage heart failure is tomake lifestyle changeslike:
What Are the Stages of Heart Failure?Each type of heart failure is classified into four stages: A, B, C, and D. The key to managing heart failure is to make changes and adhere to treatment strategies that stop or slow the progression of your heart failure from one level to the next.
What Are the Stages of Heart Failure?
Each type of heart failure is classified into four stages: A, B, C, and D. The key to managing heart failure is to make changes and adhere to treatment strategies that stop or slow the progression of your heart failure from one level to the next.
A number of medications may be used to increase the function of your heart. For right-sided heart failure, the following may be prescribed:
Left-sided heart failure requires slightly different treatments, including:
As your heart failure progresses, you may need additional treatments to manage thecomplicationsof heart failure, including medications to help support your kidney function or lifestyle changes to cope with thefatigueand weakness that heart failure can cause.
How to Be an Effective Caregiver for a Person With Heart Failure
Summary
Left- and right-sided heart failure both ultimately lead to insufficient oxygen and nutrients delivered to the body’s organs and tissues, but the symptoms and treatment of each are slightly different.
If you experience shortness of breath, fatigue, sudden weight gain, and swelling in your limbs, contact your doctor right away because these are early signs of heart failure.
10 SourcesVerywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.American Heart Association.What Is Heart Failure?American Heart Association.Causes and risk for heart failure.Tsao CW, Aday AW, Almarzooq ZI, Anderson CAM, Arora P, Avery CL,et al.Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics-2023 Update: A Report From the American Heart Association.Circulation. 2023 Feb 21;147(8):e93-e621. doi:10.1161/CIR.0000000000001123.Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care.Types of heart failure.American Heart Association.Ejection fraction heart failure measurement.Pfeffer MA, Shah AM, Borlaug BA.Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction In Perspective.Circ Res. 2019 May 24;124(11):1598-1617. doi:10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.119.313572.University of Michigan Health.Right-sided heart failure.Aggarwal M, Bozkurt B, Panjrath G, Aggarwal B, Ostfeld RJ, Barnard ND,et al.Lifestyle Modifications for Preventing and Treating Heart Failure.J Am Coll Cardiol. 2018 Nov 6;72(19):2391-2405. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2018.08.2160.American Heart Association.Classes and Stages of Heart Failure.Heidenreich P, Bozkurt B, Aguilar D, et al.2022 AHA/ACC/HFSA guideline for the management of heart failure.J Am Coll Cardiol. 2022;79(17):e263–e421. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2021.12.012
10 Sources
Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.American Heart Association.What Is Heart Failure?American Heart Association.Causes and risk for heart failure.Tsao CW, Aday AW, Almarzooq ZI, Anderson CAM, Arora P, Avery CL,et al.Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics-2023 Update: A Report From the American Heart Association.Circulation. 2023 Feb 21;147(8):e93-e621. doi:10.1161/CIR.0000000000001123.Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care.Types of heart failure.American Heart Association.Ejection fraction heart failure measurement.Pfeffer MA, Shah AM, Borlaug BA.Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction In Perspective.Circ Res. 2019 May 24;124(11):1598-1617. doi:10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.119.313572.University of Michigan Health.Right-sided heart failure.Aggarwal M, Bozkurt B, Panjrath G, Aggarwal B, Ostfeld RJ, Barnard ND,et al.Lifestyle Modifications for Preventing and Treating Heart Failure.J Am Coll Cardiol. 2018 Nov 6;72(19):2391-2405. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2018.08.2160.American Heart Association.Classes and Stages of Heart Failure.Heidenreich P, Bozkurt B, Aguilar D, et al.2022 AHA/ACC/HFSA guideline for the management of heart failure.J Am Coll Cardiol. 2022;79(17):e263–e421. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2021.12.012
Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
American Heart Association.What Is Heart Failure?American Heart Association.Causes and risk for heart failure.Tsao CW, Aday AW, Almarzooq ZI, Anderson CAM, Arora P, Avery CL,et al.Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics-2023 Update: A Report From the American Heart Association.Circulation. 2023 Feb 21;147(8):e93-e621. doi:10.1161/CIR.0000000000001123.Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care.Types of heart failure.American Heart Association.Ejection fraction heart failure measurement.Pfeffer MA, Shah AM, Borlaug BA.Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction In Perspective.Circ Res. 2019 May 24;124(11):1598-1617. doi:10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.119.313572.University of Michigan Health.Right-sided heart failure.Aggarwal M, Bozkurt B, Panjrath G, Aggarwal B, Ostfeld RJ, Barnard ND,et al.Lifestyle Modifications for Preventing and Treating Heart Failure.J Am Coll Cardiol. 2018 Nov 6;72(19):2391-2405. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2018.08.2160.American Heart Association.Classes and Stages of Heart Failure.Heidenreich P, Bozkurt B, Aguilar D, et al.2022 AHA/ACC/HFSA guideline for the management of heart failure.J Am Coll Cardiol. 2022;79(17):e263–e421. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2021.12.012
American Heart Association.What Is Heart Failure?
American Heart Association.Causes and risk for heart failure.
Tsao CW, Aday AW, Almarzooq ZI, Anderson CAM, Arora P, Avery CL,et al.Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics-2023 Update: A Report From the American Heart Association.Circulation. 2023 Feb 21;147(8):e93-e621. doi:10.1161/CIR.0000000000001123.
Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care.Types of heart failure.
American Heart Association.Ejection fraction heart failure measurement.
Pfeffer MA, Shah AM, Borlaug BA.Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction In Perspective.Circ Res. 2019 May 24;124(11):1598-1617. doi:10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.119.313572.
University of Michigan Health.Right-sided heart failure.
Aggarwal M, Bozkurt B, Panjrath G, Aggarwal B, Ostfeld RJ, Barnard ND,et al.Lifestyle Modifications for Preventing and Treating Heart Failure.J Am Coll Cardiol. 2018 Nov 6;72(19):2391-2405. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2018.08.2160.
American Heart Association.Classes and Stages of Heart Failure.
Heidenreich P, Bozkurt B, Aguilar D, et al.2022 AHA/ACC/HFSA guideline for the management of heart failure.J Am Coll Cardiol. 2022;79(17):e263–e421. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2021.12.012
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