Heart Failure Awareness Day 2013

Specialist nurses at the John Radcliffe Hospital spent Friday 10 May 2013 providing information and advice about heart failure to patients, visitors and staff for European Heart Failure Awareness Day. 

The team, looking to reinforce the importance of early diagnosis and treatment, set up an information stand on Level 2 of the John Radcliffe and offered free blood pressure checks for anyone interested in knowing their current blood pressure.

Heart failure is a serious condition but it doesn't mean (as the name may suggest) that your heart is about to stop working. It is simply a medical term used to describe when the heart muscle is not working as effectively as it should because the heart muscle has become too weak or stiff to work properly.

By raising awareness of the symptoms of heart failure, which may include shortness of breath, tiredness and weakness, swollen ankles and weight gain, the specialist heart failure team hope that more people will speak to their GPs as soon as possible.

Affecting around 900,000 people in the UK, there are lots of reasons why you might be diagnosed with heart failure, including: heart attack; high blood pressure; heart valve disease, infection of the heart muscle, excessive alcohol consumption and abnormalities in the heart rhythm. It can be sudden or it can happen slowly over months or even years and is sometimes difficult to pinpoint the actual cause. 

For more information about heart failure, please visit: www.bsh.org.uk/resources/heart-failure-awareness