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Guidelines on Overweight and Obesity: Electronic Textbook ![]() |
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Congestive Heart Failure
Obesity can result in alterations in cardiac structure and function even in the absence of systemic hypertension or underlying heart disease. Ventricular dilatation and eccentric hypertrophy may result from elevated total blood volume and high cardiac output. Diastolic dysfunction from eccentric hypertrophy and systolic dysfunction from excessive wall stress result in so-called "obesity cardiomyopathy" (172, 173). The sleep apnea/obesity hyperventilation syndrome occurs in 5 percent of severely obese individuals, and is potentially life-threatening. Extreme hypoxemia induced by obstructive sleep apnea syndrome may result in heart failure in the absence of cardiac dysfunction (174). |