NEW YORK: Many patients who have received a diagnosis of “diastolic heart failure” or DHF, which is characterised by a reduced ability of the heart to relax to allow filling, may simply be suffering from the effects of aging or other conditions that are not directly related to their heart, UK researchers report.

“Some patients with symptoms suggestive of chronic heart failure have normal heart pumping function, but have hearts that apparently don’t relax to allow filling as well as usual,” senior investigator Dr Andrew L. Clark, said.

“The symptoms are often attributed to the heart abnormalities and such patients are labelled as having DHF.”

However, “our findings suggest that the symptoms of patients with DHF are out of proportion to the objective measurement of any cardiac (disease). There may be an alternative explanation for their symptoms,” Clark added.

He and colleagues also note in the journal Heart that DHF patients in their study “were more likely to be female, older and have a higher body mass index, which may explain to some degree why their perception of symptoms is out of proportion to their cardiac (findings)”.

Studies suggest that DHF is common, Clark of the University of Hull and colleagues note, and that the outlook is similar to that of systolic heart failure (SHF), which is characterised by a reduced ability of the heart to contract.

To investigate further, they studied 568 patients with SHF, 104 with DHF and 400 healthy controls matched to the DHF patients.

Both DHF and SHF patients reported a similar degree of breathlessness. However, DHF patients had significantly higher body mass index.—Reuters