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Jose L. Zamorano, MD>>>: One of the most important functions of the heart is pumping the blood
to all your body. So the reason why you think, why you see, why you move, is because all
your body, all your organs are receiving the oxygen via the pumping of the heart. So heart
failure implies that the heart is not doing properly that function. So it is not pumping
in a proper way, which is called Systolic Dysfunction. Systolic is the contraction of
the heart or there is another possibility that is diastolic dysfunction, that is that
the heart diastole is the relaxation of the heart, so diastolic dysfunction implies that
the heart even if it pumping properly is not relaxing in the proper way, so the blood is
not coming. It is not entering inside the heart in the best way. So heart failure implies
that the patient or the heart is not able to provide the necessary blood to the other
organs of the body. How to diagnose heart failure? Well in fact, the main thing to do
is to speak with patients, so heart failure is a clinical syndrome. So, clinical syndrome
implies that if you talk to your doctor, you explain your symptoms; the doctor will be
able to diagnose you from heart failure, simply like that. You need to spend your time with
your doctor and just chat with him or her, and explain what are your symptoms, and he
or she will be able to tell you that this is related or not to heart failure. But after
saying that we have also blood tests, blood analysis like BMP, all these things from the
lab that will help your doctor to make the proper diagnosis, and if we concentrate in
the cardiac noninvasive diagnostic tool, echocardiography, this implies checking your heart with ultrasound,
no radiation, no risk. Well checking your heart with echocardiography, echo will provide
you the function of the heart, the pumping function of the heart what we call systolic
function, and also will be able to provide you how is the relaxation of your heart. So
in fact, echocardiography is a cornerstone of the noninvasive diagnostic tools in cardiology
and may lead for the detection of heart failure.