ABSTRACT
There is no adequate definition of heart failure except that it is a situation in which the heart is not providing the organs with sufficient blood. This is, in effect, a reduced cardiac output. The problems caused by failure of the heart to pump blood adequately into the body results in forward failure, ie inadequate cardiac output, and backward failure, ie back pressure into the lungs. These phases have been in existence since James Hope described them in 1832, but have been more recently rediscovered as systolic (forward) and diastolic (backward) failure.
