Why early heart failure should be treated promptly

Heart failure is a common and frequent disease in the elderly. Currently, there are about 10 million heart failure patients in China, and the incidence of heart failure is as high as 6% in people over 75 years old. This number is continuing to increase with the advent of an aging g society. Studies in the United Kingdom show that heart failure takes up about 2% of the country’s medical costs; and in the United States, the annual medical costs for heart failure are upwards of$30 billion. The large population of heart failure patients consumes the medical resources of all countries. The most prominent symptom in heart failure patients is varying degrees of dyspnea. Patients initially manifest only shortness of breath after activity, but as their condition worsens, they become less tolerant of activity; in advanced stages, patients are unable to move and can only sit in bed, or even lie down. In early stages, heart failure is not taken seriously by the patients themselves, but when the disease is advanced, it becomes very difficult to treat: not only is the quality of life low, but also the patient faces the threat of death at any time, and it brings a great burden to the family and society. Heart failure patients are generally older, have more comorbid symptoms, and are very prone to “bed pressures” during hospitalization. Under the current hospital assessment system, the increase in the number of days of hospitalization due to “bed pressures” directly leads to the low economic efficiency of the clinical departments, and is therefore rejected by both the regular cardiology and cardiac surgery departments. In clinical practice, although both cardiology and cardiosurgery can treat heart failure patients, the treatment plans given by cardiology and cardiosurgery for the same heart failure patient are very different, leaving patients confused and lacking trust. Heart failure is difficult to treat because it is not an independent heart disease, but a complex group of clinical symptoms of various heart diseases such as coronary heart disease, dilated cardiomyopathy, rheumatic heart valve disease and hypertension, which have developed to a serious stage, and almost all types of heart diseases, the final destination of progress is heart failure. Therefore, the treatment of heart failure cannot be carried out according to the original medical and surgical single mode of treatment. Routinely, heart failure is clinically divided into four stages: Stage I is when a patient presents with high risk factors for heart failure, such as hypertension, coronary artery disease, diabetes, obesity, family history of cardiomyopathy, etc., but no structural or functional abnormalities of the heart. Stage II refers to patients who do not have signs or symptoms of heart failure but have developed structural heart disease, including left ventricular hypertrophy, asymptomatic valvular disease, previous history of myocardial infarction, etc. Stage III refers to patients who have developed underlying structural heart disease and currently or previously have signs or symptoms of heart failure. continued life support is possible primarily through implantation of an artificial heart or heart transplant.