Heart failure

When the heart muscle becomes too weak to provide enough blood and oxygen to meet your body's needs, it can lead to heart failure, and cause the kidneys to not function properly. This, in turn, can lead to congestive heart failure, when your body retains fluid and congests vital organs, including your lungs.

Heart failure, sometimes known as congestive heart failure, occurs when your heart muscle doesn't pump blood as well as it should. Certain conditions, such as narrowed arteries in your heart (coronary artery disease) or high blood pressure, gradually leave your heart too weak or stiff to fill and pump efficiently. At least half of heart failure is due to coronary heart disease.

According to the American Heart Association's 2019 update on heart disease, 6.2 million Americans were living with heart failure between 2013 and 2016.

According to a 1991 report, it was suggested that the likelihood of cardiac problems were greater for shorter men. In a study of 2,500 men, several physicians found that those who were 5 feet (1.52 m) tall were twice as likely to suffer heart complications as those who were over 6 feet (1.83 metres) tall. Their explanations for the disparity ranged from differences in nutrition to differences in the size of blood vessels between shorter and taller individuals. In the same year, a Danish physician studied 20,000 men and women and declared the UK findings inapplicable to the study of heart complications.