ABSTRACT
Many patients with signs and symptoms of heart failure have normal or near normal left
ventricular ejection fraction. In 1988, Kessler introduced the term “diastolic heart failure”
to describe these patients (1). More recently, Aurigemma and Gaasch suggested a more
comprehensive definition: “if effort intolerance and dyspnea develop in a patient with
hypertensive left ventricular hypertrophy, normal ejection faction and abnormal left
ventricular filling, especially in combination with venous congestion and pulmonary
edema, it would be appropriate to use the term diastolic heart failure (2).” Alternatively,
Grossman and others have proposed purely pathophysiologic definitions, such as filling of
the left ventricle to a normal end-diastolic volume only at higher than normal pressure (3).
