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American Heart Disease Resource
The Problem With Premature Infants and Heart Disease
The connection between premature infants and heart disease is truly frightening, but it is one which must be learned about in order for any decent solutions to be able to come about. If a woman goes into labor before 37 weeks, the baby is considered as being premature, and for the majority of the time premature infants and heart disease go together because most premature babies are born with at least some type of heart problem.
About Premature Infants and Heart Disease
A premature infant is one whose organs are not fully grown, and thus the infant needs to have special care in a nursery or intensive care unit until their organ systems have developed enough to be able to sustain life without medicinal support. Premature infants and heart disease are not the only two things that go together here, however.
Other common symptoms in a premature infant include: respiratory problems such as hyaline membrane disease, episodes of absent breathing, poor feeding, transparent skin, wrinkled features, soft and flexible ear cartilage, body hair, a weak cry, inactivity, an enlarged clitoris in females, and a small scrotum in males.
Treatment
Although premature infants and heart disease are not entirely avoidable, there are forms of treatment which can be used. For instance, since infants are usually unable to coordinate sucking and swallowing before 34 weeks gestation, they thus will most likely have a feeding tube placed into their stomach and in very premature infants, the feedings may have to be done through a vein.
Complications
There are a number of different complications which may or may not be directly related to premature birth, including: hyaline membrane disease, bleeding in the brain, retinopathy, heart disease, jaundice, anemia, low blood glucose, delayed growth and development and mental-motor retardation.
Prevention
Although there is obviously no surefire way for a woman to prevent herself from going into premature labor, one of the most important steps to preventing prematurity is to receive prenatal care as early as possible in the pregnancy and to continue on with this care until the baby is born. This is because statistics show that early and proper prenatal care greatly reduces the odds of premature birth and related deaths.
Also maintaining a healthy lifestyle while you are pregnant is crucial towards the health of your baby, and so you need to make sure that you eat a diet that is rich in fresh fruits and vegetables, that you drink plenty of water, and also that you get a proper amount of exercise each day, at least thirty minutes if possible.
Although there are many different forms of treatment for heart disease in todays world, as of yet there is no cure for heart disease. However a lot of the time heart murmurs actually do not mean that there is anything wrong with your child, and these heart murmurs are known as being innocent or functional. There has been recent research conducted which goes to show that using the birth control patch can actually result in increasing your risk for heart disease, and so although the patch is generally safe for young, healthy women, it can pose serious heart disease risks for some women, particularly those who are over thirty-five years of age. Furthermore, there is also more information available regarding heart diseases as is revealed by the heart disease statistics released by the American Heart Association that showed an estimated five million Americans living their lives under the threat of heart failure, and as many as, it is believed, five hundred thousand new instances are being diagnosed annually. Everyone should be concerned with heart disease and discuss with their doctors just how do you get heart disease and how do you treat it. |
