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Articles On Heart Disease Resource
A Guide to Child Heart Disease
Heart disease is an incredibly important and serious issue, and it is very surprising just how many people do not realize that children can also suffer from heart disease. Child heart disease is actually quite a common ailment across the world, and congenital heart disease is actually one of the most common birth defects of all, affecting nearly one percent of all babies born.
Many of these infants are first diagnosed with child heart disease when their pediatrician hears a heart murmur on a routine examination.
Information on Child Heart Disease
For the most part how child heart disease works is that their heart can have a small abnormality that may or may not be noticeable at birth, and generally if there is a hole in the heart wall that lets blood travel from one side to the other then the baby will have blue lips or fingers.
There are also other problems which may be involved here, such as an abnormal heart valve, and this may result in allowing blood to flow the wrong way, and this is a problem which will usually require surgery once the child is older. While most are, some heart problems in children are not congenital, and so it is something that can never really be expected.
What a Heart Murmur is
A heart murmur is a noise that the blood makes as it flows through the heart, and it is sort of like the noise that water makes when it flows through a hose. Heart murmurs are common in children, some which are harmless, and others which are not.
Because a heart murmur is one of the most common signs of child heart disease, most parents get frantic at the term. 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.
For the times that a heart murmur does actually indicate a problem with your childs heart, this is when there is a hole in the heart, a leak in the heart valve, or a narrow heart valve. If your doctor suspects that there is a problem, then the first thing they will do is refer you to a pediatric cardiologist, which is a doctor who specializes in child heart disease. The cardiologist will do an examination and do tests in order to find out whether there is actually a problem or not.
While there are those individuals who are in denial in regards to the connection between coronary heart disease and smoking. Generally people who live in countries where blood cholesterol levels are lower, such as Japan for instance, have lower rates of heart disease, and yet at the same time some populations with similar cholesterol levels have very different heart disease rates. Treatment for the beginning stages of heart disease usually is in the form of medication. Such is the prevalence of heart disease in America, that it is believed that as many as a quarter of all Americans have some form of heart disease or the other. |
