Despite heart failure diagnoses being on the rise in the country the latest report from the Heart and Stroke Foundation indicates Canadians aren’t as informed on the condition as they should be.

Spokesperson Doctor Shelly Zieroth explains heart failure is a condition in which your heart is either too weak to pump blood forward to the rest of your body or it’s too stiff and what often happens is patients develop symptoms including shortness of breath, leg swelling called edema and even fatigue.

There are roughly 750 thousand people living with heart failure in Canada with more than 100 thousand people diagnosed with the condition each year however four in ten Canadians don’t understand it.

Zieroth says heart failure is growing in Canada due to an aging population, younger people being diagnosed and heart damage from COVID-19.