What is Heart Failure with preserved ejection fraction?

Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction is also known as HEF-PEF or diastolic heart failure and is used to describe the condition where the heart muscle is too stiff to accommodate the blood coming into it and so it's unable to relax well enough. There are different things that can cause the heart to become too stiff, such as long-standing, poorly controlled high blood pressure. The heart muscle gets thick and so it can't relax as well as it should do. Poorly controlled diabetes, being overweight, not exercising enough, can all lead to diastolic heart failure or heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. When the heart muscle is stiff, the main feeding chamber of the left ventricle, which is the left atrium, can dilate or enlarge and that can again lead to a recognition that there is a problem with a stiff heart muscle. The symptoms that can be caused with HEF-PEF can be very similar to those with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, largely around feeling tired, lethargic, breathless and suffering with leg swelling. So it's really important to make sure that all of those things can be controlled well as possible.