Left-sided heart failure: what is it?
A more frequent condition than right-sided heart failure is left-sided heart failure. It occurs when the left ventricle must work harder than usual to pump out enough blood to maintain the body’s health.
Left-sided heart failure can occur in two ways:
- The left ventricle either works at a considerably greater pressure or is unable to relax enough to fill with the required amount of blood between heartbeats in heart failure with intact ejection fraction.
- When the left ventricle can’t contract effectively, the heart lacks the power to pump blood to the body, which results in heart failure with low ejection fraction.