Diastolic Form Common Among Elderly.(diastolic form of heart failure)

2001 MAR 8 - (NewsRx.com) -- A study of almost 5,000 older adults living in four U.S. communities shows that more than half of those with heart failure had a form of the disorder that doctors know little about treating.

"Our study suggests that a large proportion of older adults with heart failure have a recently recognized, little-understood form of the disorder, and that it's especially common among women," said Dalane W. Kitzman, MD, associate professor of cardiology at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center (WFUBMC), North Carolina, and the study's main author. "The implications to public health are enormous."

Kitzman and colleagues reported their finding in the February 15, 2001, issue of the American Journal of Cardiology.

Doctors previously believed that most heart failure was a weakening of the heart muscle that kept it from pumping enough blood (systolic heart failure). In recent years, however, a second form has been recognized: the heart can empty normally, but the main pumping chamber doesn't fill with enough blood (diastolic heart failure). The result is the same - the body does not get enough oxygen-rich blood for its needs. The most common symptom is shortness of breath.

This was the first large, community-based study of heart failure among older adults. It was conducted by researchers from WFUBMC as well as the University of California at Irvine; St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, New York; the University of Washington at Seattle; the University of Massachusetts Medical Center; the University of Vermont in Burlington; and the University of Arizona at Tucson.

"For years, we focused on systolic heart failure as though it was the only kind that existed," said Kitzman. "Now, through our study and others, we're realizing that diastolic failure may be the more common form among ...