THE DISEASED HEART: YOUR QUESTIONS & DOCTOR’S ANSWERS - WHAT IS MEANT BY LEFT VENTRICULAR FAILURE ? HOW IS IT THAT A PATIENT OF HEART ATTACK DEVELOPS PARALYSIS ?
Q. What is meant by left ventricular failure ?
A. Left ventricle is the principal pumping chamber of the heart. It pumps blood into the whole body. Unfortunately, this is the one chamber which is most frequently involved in myocardial infarction. If a sufficiently large area of the left ventricle is infarcted, its pumping action is weakened so much that it is unable to pump out the full complement of blood received from the lungs, resulting in a progressively increasing accumulation of backlog of blood in the lungs. As a consequence, the lungs become congested with blood, the watery part of which oozes out as pulmonary oedema. This causes severe difficulty in breathing, and leads to cough and frothy watery sputum. If this fluid in the lungs gets infected, intractable pneumonia results.
Q. How is it that a patient of heart attack develops paralysis ?
the infarcted heart muscle becomes rough. On this rough surface, blood tends to coagulate and form a thrombus. If this thrombus breaks loose, a piece called embolus can travel to the brain through the blood stream, clog an artery there and produce infarction of the brain thus causing paralysis. Secondly, a sudden fall of blood pressure to very low levels can slow down the blood circulation in the blood vessels of the brain to such an extent that the blood may coagulate. This thrombus may cause infarction of the brain with resulting paralysis.
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Cardio & Blood | 
