Case 01/2015 – 66 Year Old Woman with Hypertensive Cardiopathy and Acute Decompensated Heart Failure

Clinical aspects

This is the case of a patient who began outpatient follow-up with symptoms of heart failure and effort dyspnea, orthopnea, and paroxistic nocturnal dyspnea with increasing intensity as well as with jugular stasis and bi-basal crackles (revealed by physical examination).

Heart failure is the final outcome of most cardiovascular diseases, and is very prevalent in Brazil. With 1,156,136 admissions in 2007, cardiovascular diseases is known to be the third most common cause of hospitalization in the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), with heart failure being the most frequent. Like other developed countries, the principal etiologies of heart failure in Brazil are hypertension and chronic ischemic heart disease, but other etiologies are also present, such as Chagas cardiomyopathy, endomyocardial fibrosis, and degenerative as well as rheumatic valvular disease.

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