When you want to know more about heart diseases, then you must first begin to understand the various types of heart disease that are prevalent today. For example, faulty mitral valve in a newborn baby is considered as one type of heart disease and an aged man, say a 65 years old male, may have a clogged artery due to plaque deposits and this condition is also termed as one type of heart disease. Hence the most important organ of your body namely your heart may even suffer from one or more of such disease conditions.
Let us have a broad look at the various types of heart disease that are known to commonly attack persons.
Atherosclerosis
The term Atherosclerosis refers to the fatty plaque deposits over the inner walls of your arteries and this is caused due to presence of higher levels of cholesterol in your blood. The plaque will effectively block free blood flow and hence your body cells will be deprived of enough oxygen. Your heart muscles will also get affected in this circumstance and eventually will lose its efficiency.
This particular condition is referred to congestive heart failure and may lead to small heart attacks and reduce your heart s overall efficiency. Atherosclerosis is responsible for causing almost half of the entire deaths happening in the United States alone.
Rheumatic Heart Disease
Rheumatic heart disease is a yet another type of heart disease that is caused due to rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever is known to affect persons, especially children, if the strep throat infection is left untreated.
The onset of rheumatic fever will in turn affect connective tissues and the heart valves leading to a condition wherein your heart valve will fail in its action of opening and closing properly. Rheumatic heart disease in its lesser form may not need any treatment, but in case of severity may require surgical intervention either for repairing or replacing heart valves.
Congenital Heart Disease
Normally you are born with this congenital heart disease and under such circumstance, your heart will be malformed and/or with improper functioning of heart valves. The severity of this congenital heart disease may vary very widely and the severely affected babies will exhibit quick exhaustion and difficulty in breathing, and sometimes may lead to sudden death.
Myocarditis
The inflammation in heart muscles is referred to as Myocarditis and it is usually an end result of some other infection affecting your body. A myocarditis condition will let out symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath and fatigue. A heart transplant is the only cure for this type of heart disease and many of the doctors prefer to treat the ailment with medications based on symptoms.
Arrhythmias
Whenever your heart loses its rhythm, then this type of heart disease is named as arrhythmias. There are two variations in arrhythmias, the first one bradycardia refers to a condition where your heart will have lower beat rate and the second tachycardia refers to an abnormally increase or higher heart rate. A yet another, but rare type of fibrillation may occur in arrhythmias, and under this condition you will feel a pulsating heart due to the difficulty in blood pumping.
If you are experiencing any of the symptoms that you may relate to some type of heart disease, then it is better you get an appointment with your doctor and get yourself thoroughly diagnosed.
[tags]Heart Disease Types, Bradycardia, Tachycardia, Heart Rhythm[/tags]