Congestive heart failure is a condition that happens when the heart is not able to pump enough blood to meet the needs of the body's tissues. When the heart fails, it is unable to pump out all the blood that enters its chambers. In other words, all the blood that is pumped to the body is returned to the heart. So in result organs such as: the liver, lungs, etc., get congested or flooded with fluid due to the backpressure of the blood.
             Common symptoms of CHF include difficult breathing, high blood pressure and swelling of legs and hands. When a person with heart failure exercises or makes physical activity, the weakened heart is unable to proportionately increase blood supply to brain, causing dizziness. To check whether a patient has CHF you would first obtain the patients medical history and chief complaints such as: shortness of breath or swelling or any weight gain. Then it would be best to check for irregular heartbeats and listen to the lungs for any irregular sounds. When the lungs get congested there are two things that happen. First, they become stiffer and it takes more of an effort to breathe. Second, the fluid starts to escape into the air sacs, which are also known as the alveoli, where oxygen is taken up by blood. The fluid interferes with oxygen exchange and can cause shortness of breath. So now the question would be whether or not to give a patient with CHF nitroglycerin. Well first!
             of all, nitroglycerin is a medication that increases blood flow by relieving spasms or causing arteries to dilate. So it works by widening the coronary artery and then improving the supply of blood and oxygen to the heart. Dilated veins decrease the filling of the left ventricle, which would reduce its workload. On the other hand, dilated arteries of the body reduce the blood pressure and the resistance that the left ventricle has to overcome in pumping blood through those arteries. Some side effects that nitrogl...