Why does left ventricular failure cause pulmonary edema?
If you’ve ever wondered how your body manages to keep up with all the work it does, look no further than your faithful heart. This tireless organ works non-stop to pump blood throughout your body day in and day out. Unfortunately, like any other machine, sometimes things go wrong.
One of those things is left ventricular failure (LVF), a condition where the heart’s left ventricle fails to pump enough blood out into circulation. One of the major causes of LVF? All sorts of diseases that lead to pulmonary edema (the WORST). So what gives? Why do these two conditions seem so intimately connected?
A Tale Of Two Hearts
To begin (yes BEGIN), let’s get back to basics for a moment. Your heart has four chambers – two atria on top and two ventricles below them. Think of this setup as something akin to an apartment building; each floor has its own set of rooms.
The right side of your heart handles “dirty” blood that needs oxygenation; it brings this deoxygenated blood from around your body via veins, delivers it through the right atrium and then sends it down into the lungs using the right ventricle.
Once oxygenated by gas exchange in tiny air sacs called alveoli in our lungs(too sciency huh?), this now-oxygen-rich blood returns courtesy several small veins leading into our hearts’ LEFT side division- specifically flowing into its LA (dang even I am getting confused)and LV via a single large vein named ‘The Pulmonary Vein’, which meaningfully carries more oxygenated/saturated red-blood cells than any other type (we are talking 98% saturation here folks)!
From there, this freshly oxygenated blood moves through the left atrium of your heart, down into the left ventricle and eventually out to your body’s circulation via a large ‘AORTA’ artery. While it might seem like these two sides of our hearts play separate roles in moving blood around our bodies, they actually work as one unit.
The Never-ending Struggle Against Gravity
Now that we’ve got all four chambers straightened out (it took some grinding I tell ya), let’s home in on why LVF happens. One thing to know is that part of what makes pumping blood throughout your entire body possible is gravity; simpler terms, there are definitely parts of your body at elevations beyond or below compared to where other pieces lie vis-a-vis earth surface.
And when you get upended: say vertically positioned ogled by behind — phew! A lot could go wrong like you’d be stranded (pun intended) without enough fluids because everything would flow towards yer lungs faster because gravity would aid them more essentially and now it remains an unbearable struggle for the incompetent Heart which SOLELY needs to maintain consistent amounts of nutrients/oxygen transfer despite such unenviable odds!
This means certain vessels have more hydrostatic pressure than others due differences in fluid weight,specifically? Our feet receive extra pushing-(hydro) force from just-sitting-there-standards while capillaries within our brains have much less–this factors into their differing drainage rates along with local resistance.
In people w/heart disease(e.g-heart attacks,), hypertension or high-altitude exposure (amongst many others),though ,extra fluid gets trapped inside these little air sacs called alveoli-particularly those EVEN closer to pulmonary veins-in each person’s lungs since venous pressures tend increase relative arterial ones really easily thanks again..gravity!!!
So basically when this happens – seriously hangs his head drives off-color jokes aside-we’re dealing w/PULMONARY EDEMA (possible trigger warning: keyword in caps).
What exactly is Pulmonary Edema?
According to the ever-relevant medical platform ‘WebMD,’ pulmonary edema refers to “fluid accumulation in lung tissues”. This fluid buildup happens because our diffusion membrane inside alveoli when besieged with such excessive pull-pressures inflows of random fluids including red blood cells can be forced across-always a BAD THING–and get trapped within the air sacs.
Talk about choking; as carbon dioxide that needs CO2 elimination amidst cellular processes gets replaced by pernicious water molecules and other miscellanious waste products-well let’s just say this accumulation can easily lead difficulties breathing (shortness of breath + insatiable cough anyone?), oxygen saturation drops, ultimately causing hypoxemia(Abnormal drop of circulating oxygen level)–none which sound like much fun but it not only grips patients physically, it murkily intrudes up into their psychological state too. No Bueno
LVF And The Pulmonary Vascular System
Now we’ll ask: where does LVF come into all this lovely mess? Simply put, if your heart isn’t managing to pump enough blood out of its left ventricle and out properly through circulation channels at larger amounts than constantly-eddying vortices then there is now increased backlog resistance/volume congestion on Left Parts compared Right side setting off a chain of terrible events.
The reasons for this are many-fold(sounds fancy huh?) due largely attributed strong backpressure pushing’d digestive juices back up towards lungs from their natural course downwards(Similarly how excess water pumps may return or seep upwards into upstream feeder tanks!!)resulting cardiac muscle needing try push maximally/extra-hard against & surpass these higher pressures present—leading eventually bring in Oxygen-rich fluids less regularly(leaky vessels + tight-compressed lungs = WEAKENED HEART OUTCOMES; EDEMA ALERT).
The bottom line (wait for it) is that LVF plays a major role in exacerbating fluid accumulation inside the lungs when pulmonary edema occurs-especially since oxygenated blood accumulated pooling inside lung vessels via Reverse heart-blood-flow effect usually exclusively rarely ever happens (no seriously)!!