Important Heart Problems

Among the heart problems you may hear about either in connection with heart attack or in other contexts are cardiac arrest and heart block. You may also hear about congestive heart failure, congenital heart disease, and rheumatic fever.

Cardiac Arrest
Anytime an individual’s heart stops beating, he or she is said to be suffering cardiac arrest. The heart may stop because of heart attack or for many other reasons drowning, electrocution, or strangulation.

When cardiac arrest occurs, immediate action is necessary or the patient may die, the brain can survive without damage for only about four minutes after circulation is stopped.

Heart Block
Sometimes a heart attack victiom who seems to be recovering will experience a sudden slowing or stopping of the heartbeat. (This phenomenon may also occur for reasons other than heart attack, but in this setting it usually affects patients in their sixties or older, and is due to an aging process.)

Heart block result from a failure of the electrical connection between the atria and the ventricles. Impulses do not reach the main pumping chamber often enough. Normal heart rate can be restrored medically, with an electronic pacemaker. Within this does not happen, an artificial pacemaker can be implanted and can take over the job indefinitely as long as the batteries are changed periodiacally.


Congestive Heart Failure
In congestive heart failure, the heart cannot pump enough blood and the result is a congestion, or backing up, of blood in the lungs. Fluid also oozes through the thin capilary walls in various parts of the body and collects in the tissue such as the lungs and skin, causing shotness of breath and edema (swelling).

Almost every known type of heart disease may produce congestive heart failure. Sometimes it can be affravated by high blood pressure, which forces the heart to work harder to deliver sufficient blood to the body’s organs and tissue. It can also be caused by heart attack, defective heart valves, a damaged section of heart muscle, or weakening of the entire heart by disease or toxins.


Congestive Heart Disease
About eight infants out of every 1,000 are born with congenital heart disease, inborn defects or the heart. Congenital heart disease varies in severity; it can affect any structure of the circulatory system, the pumping chambers, the valves that separate these chambers, the valves that separate these chambers and force the blood to flow in one direction, or blood vessels leading from the heart to the lungs and other parts of the body.