Congestive heart disease

Congestive heart failure (CHF) (also called congestive cardiac failure and heart failure) is the inability of the heart to pump a sufficient amount of blood throughout the body, or requiring elevated filling pressures in order to pump effectively. more...

CHF is an abnormal cardiac condition that reflects impaired cardiac pumping and blood flow. The pooling of blood leads to congestion in body tissue.

The term heart failure is frequently misused, especially when given as cause of death: it is not synonymous with "cessation of heartbeat" – for which see cardiac arrest. Because not all patients have volume overload at the time of initial or subsequent evaluation, the term "heart failure" is preferred over the older term "congestive heart failure". However, a fatal heart attack can happen as a result of CHF, when the heart is too exhausted to beat.

Causes

Causes and contributing factors to congestive heart failure include: genetic family history of CHF, infection, alcohol ingestion, anemia, thyrotoxicosis, arrhythmia, and hypertension. The usual heart irritants can make CHF deadly: arterial plaque, stress, smoking, old age, no/little excercise, overworked heart, and obesity. In genetic family history of CHF, the cause is a weak heart having thinner muscle walls than usual, and often weakened further by one or more of the above heart irritants. Arterial plaque (caused by eating fatty or greasy foods) lines the inside of the arteries and heart, increasing blood pressure and tiring the heart. In obesity cases, the heart is squashed by fat surrounding it, giving it too little room to beat. The result is irregular heart beats causing inefficient blood pumping and a tired heart.

Read more at Wikipedia.org