What is systolic heart failure?
Systolic heart failure is a form of heart failure in which the heart’s lower chambers (ventricles) have become too weak to contract and pump out enough blood to meet the body’s needs, resulting in shortness of breath and other heart failure symptoms. Click here for an illustration of the difference between systolic and diastolic heart failure. Women are less likely than men to have systolic heart failure, accounting for about 25% to 35% of systolic heart failure cases.1-3 Men have double the risk of developing blood-pumping (systolic) problems compared with women, and when women do develop them they tend to be less severe.4 Researchers think that the reason for this difference is that the main pumping chamber (left ventricle) in women responds differently to conditions that cause it to work harder to pump out blood, such as high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, and narrowing of the aorta (the main artery that carries blood from the heart to the body).5-7 Studies have found that
