ABSTRACT
Acute heart failure is considered when symptoms and signs indicative of ventricular failure develop rapidly, within hours or days, in patients without a prior history of cardiac decompensation.1 Exacerbation of symptoms in patients with previously established chronic heart failure is not considered in this definition, and yet development of symptoms in an otherwise previously stable chronic heart failure patient may be secondary to an acute condition (e.g. acute myocardial infarction (MI)), or may be a life-threatening situation that needs urgent or semiurgent admission to hospital.
