The short answer is no. Congestive heart failure is a condition that is a collection of signs and symptoms. Because heart failure is not a disease, it can’t really be “cured,” although this doesn’t mean that CHF can’t be successfully treated. In some cases, heart failure can even be completely reversed, although this is less common. Treatment of underlying causative factors such as low thyroid hormone or blocked coronary arteries and reducing risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, and alcohol intake can make a big difference in treating or reversing the symptoms of congestive heart failure.
The Heart and How It Works
Before further discussing congestive heart failure, it is important to briefly review the basic make-up of the heart and how it works to circulate your blood. The heart is a muscular organ in the middle of your chest. It is approximately the size of your clenched fist and it is the “pump” that circulates all the blood in your body. The contractions of this muscular pump are the heartbeats you can feel and that your doctor listens to with a stethoscope. The heart is divided into four chambers. There are two atria and two ventricles. The atria, which are located at the top of the heart, are smaller and have thinner walls. The atria are connected to the ventricles below them. The atrium and ventricle work together as a team to pump blood out of the heart. Although they are connected to each other, each one of the two sets of atria and ventricles pumps blood to a different place.
The right atrium and ventricle take blood from the largest vein in the body (the vena cava) and pump it into the lungs for oxygenation. The left atrium and ventricle take blood coming from the lungs and pump it into the rest of the body. When your blood circulates, it moves blood from the veins in your body toward your heart.
This blood in your veins is low in oxygen and high in carbon dioxide. The blood enters the right upper chamber of your heart, the right atrium.When the atrium contracts, the blood is moved into the larger chamber below it called the right ventricle. Here, the blood from the veins, which is filled with carbon dioxide, is propelled into the lungs. The lungs are able to get rid of the carbon dioxide and put oxygen into the blood. This oxygenated blood circulates out of the lungs and into the left side of the heart.
The blood from the lungs enters the left atrium and when this chamber contracts, it pushes the blood into the largest chamber of the heart, the left ventricle. The left ventricle’s job is to push the blood into the aorta, the largest artery in the body. Because this chamber supplies most of the heart’s pumping power, it’s larger and has more muscle mass than the other chambers. From the aorta, the blood circulates to all the organs of the body, bringing oxygen and carrying away carbon dioxide.