What is "bendopnea"

Bendopnea is a newly described symptom of heart failure, meaning shortness of breath when leaning forward. It was introduced by Thibodeau et al. in 2014. Patients with heart failure often experience this when bending over to tie a shoe or putting socks on. It has been defined as occurring within 30 seconds of bending over, but could occur in as few as 8 seconds. When a patient is in heart failure, it often means the ventricular filling pressures are high at baseline. When said person bends forward, it causes a further increase in ventricular filling pressures, especially in patients with lower cardiac indices. The term "bendopnea" was coined to be easily identifiable among patients and physicians.