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Your doctor may recommend healthy lifestyle changes, medicines, or other treatments aimed at keeping your symptoms from getting worse, increasing your ability to exercise, improving heart function, and ensuring a better quality of life. There is no cure for pulmonary hypertension unless chronic blood clots in the lungs are the cause.

Age, family history and genetics, lifestyle, heart disease or other medical conditions, race, sex, and a history of surgery can all raise your risk of developing the structural and electrical anomalies that cause atrial fibrillation. Even in a healthy heart, a fast or slow heart rate—from exercising or sleeping, for example—can trigger atrial fibrillation.

To diagnose an aortic aneurysm, your doctor will do a physical exam and an imaging test to confirm a screening test. An abdominal aortic aneurysm is diagnosed when your abdominal aorta is three centimeters or greater in diameter. The normal diameter of the thoracic aorta depends on your age, your sex, and which part of the thoracic aorta is measured.

Signs, symptoms, and complications will vary based on the type of ischemic heart disease you have. Some people report severe symptoms of ischemic heart disease, but others have no signs or symptoms at all. If you have “silent” ischemic heart disease, you may not experience any symptoms until you have complications, such as acute coronary events including a heart attack.

Cardiogenic shock is life-threatening and requires rapid diagnosis and identification of the cause, and emergency medical treatment. Treatments include medicines, heart procedures, and medical devices to support or restore blood flow in the body and prevent organ damage. Because cardiogenic shock is a serious medical condition affecting multiple body organs, a team of medical specialists usually provides care. Some medical devices may be used temporarily to stabilize or support you until a permanent device can be implanted or until a heart transplant can be performed. For people who have severe organ damage and may not survive after cardiogenic shock, palliative care or hospice care may help them have a better quality of life with fewer symptoms.

Signs and symptoms vary based on the type of angina you have and on whether you are a man or a woman. Angina symptoms can differ in severity, location in the body, timing, and how much relief you may feel with rest or medicines. Since symptoms of angina and of heart attack can be the same, call 9-1-1 if you feel chest discomfort that does not go away with rest or medicine. Angina can also lead to a heart attack and other complications that can be life-threatening.

Your doctor may diagnose asthma based on your medical history, a physical exam, and results from diagnostic tests. Your history of asthma symptoms will help your doctor determine if you have mild, moderate, or severe asthma.

You may have an increased risk of asthma because of your environment or occupation, your family history or genes, other medical conditions, your race or ethnicity, or your sex.

You may have an increased risk of cardiogenic shock because of your age, any cardiovascular or other medical conditions you have, medical procedures, your race or ethnicity, and your sex.

Your doctor may diagnose cystic fibrosis based on your signs and symptoms and results from certain tests, such as genetic and sweat tests that are done to confirm screening tests.