Dad's Repeated Pneumonia Is Sign Of Congestive Heart Failure

In late 2018, Son Vang developed pneumonia. A few months later, he experienced flu followed by another bout of pneumonia. Doctors performed a chest X-ray after his recurrent illnesses and found something worrisome.

"They happened to see that my heart looked like it enlarged," Vang, now 46, of Northern Virginia, tells TODAY.com. "They wanted to do a (echocardiogram)." That test revealed that his ejection fraction, a measure of how effectively your blood pumps, was "really low" and the then 41-year-old was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2019.

"It was very scary," he says. "They even said ... it doesn't look good and if this treatment doesn't help, you have to be placed on the transplant list and wait for a new heart."

Repeated illness led to scary diagnosis At the time, Vang was unsure why he was becoming seriously ill so often.

"We were constantly trying to figure out why I was coughing so much and why when I got sick, it was worse," he says. "(In the past) I never had quite the amount of sickness and intensity."

When doctors finally conducted the X-ray and echocardiogram, they understood Vang's congestive heart failure contributed to him falling ill so often.

"The congestive heart failure it allowed me to not fight whatever virus and colds and then it gets worse," Vang says.

Doctors started him on medications to treat his congestive heart failure and placed him on the heart transplant list because he would likely need a new heart in the future.

"Being on certain medications, that allowed me to recover," he says.

One of the medications he took was a diuretic, a drug that prevents water retention in the body by encouraging urination. Last year, Vang began coughing again and doctors worried that his diuretic was no longer working. He began taking a new medication that helped him drop about 10 pounds of fluid within two days. Soon, he was disoriented and didn't understand where he was.

"I didn't remember anything that evening at all, including not remembering who my wife was," he says.

While his wife, Susan, worried that Vang had a stroke, doctors soon knew what caused Vang's confusion. The new medication he started reduced the fluid in his body so quickly that he experienced an electrolyte imbalance, which lead to his cognitive troubles.

"My wife was really frightened. She started crying. She didn't know what was going on," he recalls. "The doctor explained to her that this was not a stroke, that it was just fluid reduction and once I got back some of those electrolytes and important fluids that (I) would remember things."

Vang recovered from that but about two weeks later, he felt unwell again. He felt so poorly that he spent at least three days a week in bed barely being able to move. While his doctors knew something was wrong, they weren't entirely sure what.

"We were hoping it wasn't my heart," he says. But it was. "It turned out that the heart just really started rapidly failing."

His heart's ejection fraction was at 15%. An ejection fraction measures how much blood the heart's left ventricle pumps out. A normal ejection fraction ranges from 55% to 70% according to the American Heart Association . Doctors placed him on a temporary heart pump that would support his heart so it could strengthen. But it also kept him tethered to a hospital bed.

"I couldn't leave the hospital because of this device," Vang says. "It allowed my heart to recover on its own and it allowed my heart to recover to the point where I was able to get this other device."

Receiving the other device, an Abbott HeartMate 3, a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), allowed Vang to eventually return home. He received it in an open-heart procedure on June 6, 2023.

At times, recovery felt tough.

"I had to stay in the hospital for another two or three weeks for all the healing," he says. "I was so excited (to go home). I was in the hospital for over two months. At this time, I was feeling a lot better. I was able to eat foods. I was able to walk up and down the stairs. I was able to shower."

Congestive heart failure Heart failure occurs when something causes an abnormality in the heart muscle that leads to muscle damage. Congestive heart failure occurs when fluid builds up in the body from the heart failure.

"The heart cannot pump enough blood to meet the body's needs. When that happens, blood accumulates in the main pumping chamber of the heart, which is called the left ventricle," Dr. Robert Kormos, division vice president of global medical affairs at Abbott, who was not Vang's doctor, tells TODAY.com. "When that blood backs up, that pressure gets transmitted to the lungs and other organs and that's the congestion that people refer to."

Symptoms of congestive heart failure include:

Shortness of breath

Swelling in the legs

Bloating in the abdomen

Heart failure, in general, remains common affecting one in four people in their lifetime, Kormos says. It occurs most often in people ages 60 and older. While aging causes many cases of heart failure, some genetic conditions or viral infections can cause it, but these causes are "less common," he notes. In some cases, heart failure can be reversed but it's "more deadly than any cancer we know."

"Within five years of having heart failure, 50% of patients have died," Kormos says. "In the U.S. right now, 300,000 patients a year die of heart failure."

Receiving a LVAD, like Vang did, can increase a patient's survival and delay their need for a heart transplant by years.

"The five-year survival (with an LVAD) is 64%," Kormos says. "This is an average. You get people living less and more."

Kormos says when patients receive a heart pump they receive "bonus years before the transplant."

"The LVADs gets rid of that congestion by decompressing the heart, so the kidneys, the liver, the brain all get better," he says. "The other thing it does is it increases the total blood flow to the body two or three times better than the original failing heart. It makes the efficiency of the blood getting to the important organs of the body much better."

Patients with LVADs need to take a blood thinner, which can increase uncontrolled bleeding if they were to be cut or injured, for example.

People can lower their risk of heart failure by making lifestyle changes, such as treating high blood pressure, managing their type 2 diabetes, quitting smoking and maintaining a healthy body weight.

"It definitely makes an impact in patients lives and wellbeing," Kormos.

'Cherish things in life' For months after, Vang needed to attend physical therapy to rebuild the strength he lost after being in the hospital for so long. While it was difficult at times, he was happy to be moving his body again.

"I was awfully excited," he says. "I wanted to try and push myself, but I was scared. I didn't know what I was going to be able to do."

For three days a week for three months, Vang attended physical therapy and he believes it was "one of the biggest things that helped my recovery." He feels "great" now and is back to life as usual.

"I'm doing everything that I was doing before," he says. "I'm golfing, I'm working."

His experience with congestive heart failure taught him to "cherish things in life."

"You don't know what you have until it can be taken away from you. When I was in the hospital, I wasn't sure whether I was going to get out and see my kids," Vang says. "I wasn't sure if I was going to be the same person I was before."

Vang remains on the heart transplant list but hopes it will be years before he needs to undergo that surgery. Since receiving his LVAD, Vang has spoken to people who fear receiving a pump and he tries to encourage them to try it and have a "happy ending" like he has.

"Your body is a magnificent thing, and it does magnificent things like recover," he says. "You (can) put yourself in a positive mindset (so) that you can live a life and be happy."