Overview
Heart disease and Cardiac ailments are very difficult to control when it occur in adults, so you can think of the tragic when it happens in children. There are various sorts of heart issues that can affect children. There are viral infections, congenital heart defects that affect the cardiovascular functionality in children and even the cardiac ailments happen later in childhood because of the genetic syndromes. There is good news that with advancement in medicines and latest technologies, it is easy to detect and to get treated.
Types of heart disease
There are many types of heart disease and related problems:
- Congenital Heart Disease: It is a type of heart disease mostly found in children at the time of their birth.
- Arrhythmias: This disease may occur in children and causes abnormal rhythm of the heart.
- Heart Murmurs: In this disease there is a whooshing sound generated due to blood circulating via heart chambers, valves or via blood vessels situated near heart.
- Rheumatic Heart Disease: The bacteria called streptococcus which is the reason of scarlet fever and strep throat, might lead to rheumatic heart disease if left untreated.
- Viral Infections: Along with flu or respiratory illness, virus can cause heart diseases also.
Cyanotic Congenital Heart Disease
CCHD or Cyanotic Congenital Heart Disease is an issue occurs in children at birth. It causes low level of oxygen components in blood of children. A bluish tint on the skin which is known as cyanosis is the most common symptom.
Some of the issues which lead to this type of cardiac ailment include:
- A disturbance in the aorta
- A issues with the heart valves
- Thickened wall or fat storage on walls of ventricles
Non-Cyanotic Congenital Heart Disease
Non-Cyanotic Congenital heart Disease sometimes called acyanotic heart disease is one of the classes of congenital cardiac disease. In these, the blood flows towards right side from the left side of the heart due to a hole a structural defect in the interventricular septum. In systemic blood circulation, most the times people retain regular levels of oxyhemoblobin saturation. This term is an outdated one as the patient of non-cyanotic congenital heart disease may show some of symptoms like cyanosis, which occurs due to insufficient oxygen in blood and turns blue.
Congenital Heart Diseases
Congenital heart diseases is just the other way of stating that your heart had some issues in heart’s structure when the kid born. Some of the kids might have hole in their heart or sometimes more severe problems. Though these are more serious conditions, most of the issues can be treated with the help of surgery. With the help of available latest technologies most of the dieases can be diagnosed and treated and early age.
Uncommon Heart Conditions
Some of the most uncommon health conditions are:
- Atherosclerosis
- Eisenmenger Syndrome
- Kawasaki Disease
- Pericarditis
Diagnosis of Congenital Heart Conditions
Many times medical experts can find some issues to diagnose before the baby is born, here are some methods to do the diagnosis of heart disease in children:
- Echocardiogram: It is a type of ultrasound that takes picture of your heart. Many types of echocardiogram are available, so ask experts what type you need.
- Cardiac catheterization under the guidance of expert surgeon to take x-ray video to look inside your heart
- Chest X-ray
- MRI Scan
- Electrocardiogram to measure electrical activity of heart
Care and Treatment
Every individual is different; there are some occurances where you might not need to undergo any treatment. Or in some cases you might require some medications, other procedures or sometimes surgery. In any case if you have CHD, you might require consulting cardiac specialist on a regular basis.
To protect oneself from heart disease, here are some things to take care of:
- Consult with doctor if you have congenital heart defect
- Talk with doctor if you have symptoms of some infections like sore throat, fever, and general body pains.