Doctors describe heart failure as an enlarged, swollen or weak
heart. Sometimes, it may be referred to as congestive heart
failure, where patients have fluid accumulation or "congestion"
primarily in the lungs.Heart failure is not a heart attack. A
heart attack usually results from blockage in the blood vessels
that cut off the supply of blood to the heart muscle.Unlike a
heart attack, heart failure is a chronic progressive weakening
of the heart muscle.It develops when the heart's muscle becomes
weakened after it is injured and loses its ability to pump
enough blood to supply the vital organs.Those remaining healthy
parts of the heart get more and more stretched out and weaker,
almost like a stretched out balloon or rubber band.Cardiologist
and physician Dr. Wong Teck Wee, who is also a senior lecturer
at Universiti Putra Malaysia, said improved treatment of
cardiovascular disease, particularly of acute heart attacks, had
kept more people, especially the elderly, alive, although at the
cost of weakened heart