Two Main Causes of Heart Disease for Children

You do not expect children to have heart disease; after all, isn’t heart attacks and other ailments for old folks? Unfortunately, that is not the case! It’s heartbreaking but kids do get heart disease too. For them, there are two different types of heart disease ? congenital and acquired. Sometimes known as a congenital heart defect, congenital heart disease is one that a child is born with. As far as the acquired version is concerned, this type of heart disease is one that develops over time during childhood. It can be caused from any number of minor ailments to major diseases.

Three of the most common congenital heart defects include ventricular septal defects, ductus arteriosis and atrial septal defects. As far as the acquired heart disease is concerned these can be caused by rheumatic fever, infection of the heart sac, an infected endocarditis and something called Kawasaki disease. Kawasaki disease usually afflicts children under the age of 5 while rheumatic fever is quite a common disease that is usually prevented by vaccination shots. Rheumatic fever is not deadly but its effects can cause damage throughout the body that may not be detected for several years ? most notable is damage to the heart muscle, thus causing heart disease.

Approximately 1% of all babies born each year have some sort of heart defect. Some of these congenital problems are something they eventually outgrow while others may require surgery to correct. Even babies with the severest of defects can benefit from surgery. The hope is that the repair to the defect will give the babies the jumpstart they need to live a normal life. The fact is, some babies will require multiple surgeries to truly find some normalcy.

It is important to note that with congenital heart defects, there is nothing that you can do as a parent to have prevented it. Many parents wonder if it was that joint they smoked in high school or the excessive partying from college that “tainted” their gene pool. Sometimes, deformities and defects just happen whether by mutation or family biological history, luck of the genetic draw.

Testing for heart problems is sometimes a bit trickier with children because of their size. The catheterization is particularly tricky because children’s blood vessels are a lot smaller and a catheter must be threaded through a blood vessel to get to the heart. This action is to take samples and shoot dye into the heart in order to get special x-rays completed which show the extent of the heart problems.

Blood tests, an echocardiogram, x-rays and electrocardiogram are just a few more testing procedures that children are put through in order to test for congenital or acquired heart defects. Each child is different so the diagnostic tests may differ for one child to the next. Doctors and nurses work hard to ensure the testing experience is not traumatic. The tests often help the doctors decide if whether or not surgery is a necessity or whether more non-invasive procedures could be tried out first.