Left-sided heart failure happens when the left ventricle can't pump enough blood out. Watch for weak pulses, pale cool skin, fatigue, and mental confusion from poor blood flow, plus shortness of breath and a wet cough as blood backs up into the lungs.
Let's talk about the key signs and symptoms that you'll see in a patient with left sided heart failure. Now what's happening here is that the left side of the heart, it just can't pump enough blood out to the body, so the heart is damaged somehow and then this decreases the cardiac output. So the cardiac outputs decreased. The body and the organs are not getting the blood flow that they need to stay happy. So what you'll see is a decreased oxygen saturation, weak peripheral pulses, pale and cool extremities, fatigue and weakness, mental status changes and decrease urine output. Those are all possibilities that can happen with left sided heart failure simply because the body is just not getting that blood flow it needs to function. So the kidney is not going to be happy, the brain's not going to be happy, the extremities are not going to be getting the blood flow that they need. And then remember, the heart and the lungs, they are best friends. So you could see increased respiratory rate, productive cough and shortness of breath, that those lungs are going to try to compensate for that lack of blood flow and increase that respiratory rate and then blood can back up into the lungs, unfortunately, and cause that productive cough and shortness of breath.
