What if your heart was trying to tell you something? Less known of cardiac pathologies, theheart failure touch today 10% of people over 70. And yet, its incidence increases more and more before the age of 55, due to bad lifestyle habits such as smoking, sedentary lifestyle or poor diet. If 1.5 million adults are affected, this figure is, on the one hand, probably underestimated and at the same time, with the aging of the population, it could grow by 25% every 4 years.
The “very general public” campaign launched by Health Insurance this Tuesday, September 20 is centered around three axes: making the symptoms known, improving and anticipating the care and promoting the early diagnosis of the disease. At the origin of this desire to educate the general population, the observation that too many false assertions persist about heart failure.
#Heart failure | In a few minutes, start of the press conference to raise awareness of heart failure and its warning signs. pic.twitter.com/CMKhY019qF
— Health Insurance (@Assur_Maladie) September 20, 2022
First of all, too many people think that heart failure is not a serious pathology. “When a person announces their cancer, the emotion is immediate. It’s not the same when someone announces they have heart failure.”, recognizes Pr Christophe Leclercq, president of the French Society of Cardiology, head of the cardiology and vascular diseases department. Yet in reality, heart failure causes 12 times more deaths than road accidents.
It’s not just a disease of older people either.. “One of my 46-year-old patients is forced to avoid certain metro stations without an escalator or elevator, thus lengthening her journey, she prefers to wait hours for a bus instead of walking a few meters, giving her cold sweats”explains cardiologist Florence Beauvais.
Listen to your symptoms before the disease gets worse
The main symptoms heart failure are summarized according to acronym EPOF (shortness of breath, weight gain, edema and fatigue). And in the event of symptoms, even slight ones, it is necessary to know how to insist with his general practitioner on the unusual nature of the symptoms felt, because if they are often minimal at the beginning, they settle gradually and can be trivialized. Symptoms that can sometimes be ignored in so-called “young” patients. “Heart failure is not just an old man’s disease, it’s not true“, says Philippe Müller, president of the association Heart Failure Supporta patient support association created in 2017.
Hence the interest of this campaign, which is aimed at both health professionals, but also patients and their families. “It is important to know how to watch your legs or the trace of your socks at the ankle”specifies Dr Julie Chastang, deputy secretary general of the College of General Medicine, general practitioner at the municipal health center of Champigny sur Marne.
If the first part of the campaign focuses on raising awareness of the signs, the second part, which will begin in 2023, will focus on the right reflexes to adopt in the event of heart failure. Because if the picture looks black, the patient’s quality of life can be improved if the care is good. And on a daily basis, certain improvements such as a change in diet (low in salt) or the practice of physical exercise can make the difference.
