All Heart Disease
With today's awareness about heart disease, most savvy consumers have learned the basics about what they can do to prevent a heart attack. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 652,000 men and women died in 2005 due to heart disease. And, while the majority of these deaths occur because of coronary artery disease, there are 50 other types of heart disease that people should be aware of---especially if it runs in their family.
The Different Types of Heart Disease
Given all of the different types of heart disease, they can be conveniently divided into six different problems: heart chambers, the heart muscle, heart valves, coronary arteries and veins, the cardiac electrical system and the heart's lining. Each of these problem areas has its unique set of symptoms and requires special care and rehabilitation.
The Heart Chambers
The major type of disease connected with the heart's chambers is congestive heart failure---often known simply as heart failure. During congestive heart failure, the heart continues to function but less efficiently. It is also called left or right sided heart failure, or systolic or diastolic heart failure. Congestive heart failure causes the heart to work harder because the arteries that return blood to the heart become narrowed with the accumulation of cholesterol. High blood pressure can also make the heart work harder and less efficiently.
Over time, as the heart becomes weaker, the heart cannot pump an adequate amount of blood to the rest of the body and it begins to back up into the lungs, making it difficult to breathe. It also causes the feet, ankles or legs to swell which makes it uncomfortable to wear shoes, walk and get any form or exercise---exactly what the sufferer needs to re-circulate blood back to the heart. Heart failure can also affect the kidneys' ability to dispose of sodium and water, leading to even more fluid retention. In the end, the very things that could improve the situation become impossible because the patient is so fatigued and, left untreated, the conditions continue their downward spiral.
The Valves
Valves inside the heart ensure that the blood continues to pump in its one intended direction. There are a number of different types of valves that include mitral, aortic and tricuspid valves that separate the four chambers of the heart. Each has its own function. When the heart valves fail to close completely, the heart experiences regurgitation, or a backward flow of blood. If the valves don't completely close and blood regurgitates into the neighboring chamber, it causes the heart to work harder and less efficiently to get its job done. This can lead to poor circulation, fatigue, problems breathing and fluid accumulating in many areas of the body---especially the lower extremities.
Valves that don't completely close cause the heart to work harder. As fluid accumulates in the right ventricle, the blood fails to get enough oxygen, so the patient is constantly out of breath. When adequate amounts of blood do not return to the left ventricle, the heart has to work harder to distribute oxygen to the body. In the case of the lower extremities, they become deprived of the oxygen and nutrients they need, so they become susceptible to disease and tissue destruction. Similar to diabetics, something as simple as a cut or blister can lead to serious complications because the body lacks the capability to take care of itself.
The Coronary Arteries
Most men and women who die from heart disease die from coronary artery disease, or CAD. CAD is a slowly evolving process that begins in one's early 20s, when cholesterol and saturated fat is eaten through the diet and begins to accumulate along the inside of the coronary arteries---the arteries that supply blood to the heart. If the blood supply to the heart is sufficiently reduced, the patient will experience pain in his chest, lower jaw, left arm or a variety of other areas. People with CAD are at serious risk for a heart attack. If their heart doesn't function properly, other serious complications like those mentioned in the previous areas can result. Under the worse cases, death can result.
While there are a number of effective treatments such as angioplasty or coronary artery bypass surgery, only in rare instances can the disease be reversed.
The Electrical System
The heart works on a finely choreographed sequence of contractions and relaxations that depend on a form of electrical system. While the heart has no wires per se, it does contain an intricate number of conductive channels that regulate how fast or how slowly the heart beats. If the heart's rhythm becomes disoriented, it develops a series of arrythmias. An analogy would be a car that is only running on six out of eight cylinders. While it will still drive, it can't function at full capacity and is at risk for developing more serious complications.
If the heart beats too fast, it's called tachycardia. During tachycardia, the heart does not have enough time to completely fill its chambers with blood, hence the body is only getting a fraction of the blood it needs. If it beats too slowly, it's called bradycardia. Bradycardia results in incomplete emptying of the heart's chambers that ultimately leads to poor circulation of the body and a shortage of the oxygen and nutrients it needs.
Bradycardia and tachycardia can affect any of the heart's chambers or the conductive channels. When this happens, the heart can go into cardiac arrest or, at the least, the heart cannot pump the proper amount of blood to the vital organs. The overall effect is that the body becomes undernourished and sets itself up for a series of more serious complications.
The Heart's Inner and Outer Lining
The heart has an inner lining called the endocardium and an outer lining called the pericardium. Both can become inflamed, causing endocarditis and pericarditis. Endocarditis often affects the valves of the heart, causing all of the associated valvular problems discussed above. Pericarditis can cause constrictive pericarditis and limits the heart's cardiac output, or the amount of blood that the left ventricle pumps with each beat. Both affect the heart's ability to pump blood to the rest of the body, that affects all of the other systems of the body.
Congenital Heart Diseases
Most of the diseases described above affect adults and may not be discovered until later in life. However, congenital heart defects occur prior to birth and can affect the heart muscle, valves or blood vessels. Some of the most common types include ventricular septal defect, pulmonic stenosis, tetralogy of fallot and hypoplastic left heart syndrome and can be corrected by surgery.
Congenital defects like septal defects cause blood to leak from one chamber to another. Others like pulmonic stenosis restricts the amount of blood getting circulated to the lungs, causing lower oxygen concentrations to the tissues. Like the conditions in the adult heart, congenital defects ultimately affect the overall efficiency of the body's organs to do their jobs.
