Despite heart failure diagnoses being on the rise in the country, the latest report from the Heart and Stroke Foundation indicates Canadians aren’t as informed on the condition as they should be.

 

Spokesperson Doctor Shelly Zieroth [zee-roth] explains what heart failure is.

 

“Heart failure is a condition in which your heart is either too weak to pump blood forward to the rest of your body or it’s too stiff and what often happens is patients develop symptoms including shortness of breath, legs swelling and even fatigue.”

 

There are roughly 750 thousand people living with heart failure in Canada, with more than 100 thousand people diagnosed with the condition each year.

 

However, four in ten Canadians don’t understand heart failure, and two in three people don’t know there is no cure for the condition.

 

Zieroth says reasons that heart failure is growing in Canada is due to an aging population, younger people being diagnosed, and heart damage from COVID-19.

 

For more information on heart failure, listen to the full interview on Thompson Today at 12:40 and 5:10 this afternoon.