Browsing: Heart
The page provides quick access to a list of common heart diseases, syndromes, health conditions, and other topics of health importance about your heart. The list is organized alphabetically. Links are provided to respective diseases sections that serve as a comprehensive and ultimate guide about the disease or health condition.
Our heart is the most sophisticated working muscle in the body. A heart beats about 100,000 times in a day. It continuously supplies oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. The heart also pumps blood to expel waste products such as carbon dioxide to the lungs, which has to be eliminated from our body.
Proper heart function is highly essential to support life. There are many types of heart diseases that can occur if the heart does not function properly or if any other organ, influencing the heart, does not function efficiently. Most heart diseases are lifelong conditions, and if experienced once, they can create problems throughout your life and sometimes can be a cause of death.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) states that heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia. In the US, one in every four deaths occurs due to a heart disease.
Some of the common heart diseases and heart conditions are coronary heart disease, enlarged heart, heart attack, irregular heart rhythm, tachycardia, atrial fibrillation, congenital heart diseases, heart attack and hypertension. In the United States, the most common type of heart disease is coronary artery disease (CAD).
A Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD) surgery is a type of heart surgery which is performed to correct a hole between the left and right ventricles. Severe complications after the surgery are rare and the VSD surgery success rate is very high. You should ask your child’s doctor about risks after a VSD surgery.
Ventricular septal defect is a birth defect (congenital) of the heart in which there is a hole in the wall (septum) that divides the lower two chambers (called ventricles) of the heart. It occurs due to an incomplete formation of the wall during the development stage of a foetus.
The ability of blood to clot is what keeps us alive. Without it, even a simple paper cut can become an emergency condition. But when the blood clot affects our vein, it becomes even more deadly. Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a condition that encompasses two other conditions which are inter-related.
Most heart diseases, cancer, and diabetes are the leading causes of deaths and disability in the world and are chronic in nature. These are defined as chronic diseases because they require ongoing treatment and management and last more than one year, and for lifetime in many cases.
Pericarditis makes the sac covering your heart inflamed and swollen followed by severe pain in the chest. There are many factors that can contribute to worsening of the condition if not controlled at the right time. Stress is one of them. Stress can affect any organ system.
Hypertension, (also known as high blood pressure), is often a silent disease because the signs do not appear in the beginning in most cases. You might not even know that you have it. But, the increased blood pressure continues to damage your body and by the time you diagnose it, it is already late.
Hypertension is also known as ‘high blood pressure’. Normally, blood pressure increases beyond the normal limit when a person does any physical activity such as exercise, or sports, etc. This rise in pressure becomes normal after some time. If the pressure remains high for a long time, the condition is called hypertension and needs treatment.
The exact cause of hypertension is not understood completely. Scientists believe that there are various mechanisms that can be considered to cause hypertension. These include increased stress level in the blood vessel walls, increased blood volume, and harder blood vessels. The main causes among these mechanisms are not understood fully but there are various risk factors that may trigger hypertension in a person.
When the blood flows with high pressure across the blood vessels, it causes some serious complications. Since hypertension is the ‘silent killer’, it does not show any complication at an early stage. High blood pressure over time can disturb functions of several organs such as kidneys, heart, eyes, etc.
Endocarditis is a rare and potentially fatal infection of the endocardium (inner lining) of the heart. Most commonly it is caused by bacteria which enter into the blood stream and then travel to the heart, resulting in an inflammation of the inner lining of the heart.