Guarding your kids against heart diseases

The best way to do it

The heart is a muscular organ that pumps blood to the rest of the body. The heart, the blood vessels and all organs that coordinate the distribution of blood form a system known as cardiovascular. This system ensures that blood is taken to the lungs where oxygen is taken in and carbon dioxide removed to the air, to the gut where nutrition for the body is absorbed, to the kidneys where waste products are excreted and to the rest of the body where nutrition and oxygen are needed for normal functioning.

Your baby’s foetal heart is formed by the fourth week of gestation and by week five, doctors can hear it pumping. When in the womb, your child has a cardiovascular system that performs slightly different. He gets oxygen and nutrition from you via the placenta. His lungs do not function till when he is born. There are certain holes and blood vessels that bypass the lungs and others that connect to the placenta. All these start undergoing changes with your baby’s first cry and the cutting of the cord.

Note that diseases of the heart can be present from time your baby is born (congenital) or acquired later. Congenital diseases account for most of childhood heart diseases, while acquired heart diseases are a leading cause of death in adults in the developed world.

Types of heart diseases

Congenital heart diseases are mostly structural. There could be a ‘hole in the heart’ a term loosely used to define defects in parts of the heart. This causes blood vessels to block (coarctation of the aorta), or the gates of the different heart chambers (valves), for example pulmonary stenosis, to refuse to open. Others include holes and blood vessels that were previously functioning well before birth but close during or immediately after birth and persist (patent ductus arteriosus) or blood vessels that arise from the wrong chambers (transposition of great arteries).

They are also divided into two — the pink baby and the blue baby. The pink baby is otherwise fine but a heart disease is detected when the doctor listens to the baby’s heart, or later when the baby begins to show symptoms like breathlessness, sweating a lot, generalised body swelling, poor feeding habits, not gaining weight normally or collapses. The doctor will listen to the heart and performs tests that may confirm the diagnosis. You need not worry though because most are repaired either through an open heart surgery or by laparoscopy.

A blue baby, on the other hand, occurs as a result of a defect that reduces blood supply to the lungs or mixes the oxygenated blood with the deoxygenated. This increases carbon dioxide levels in your baby’s body. This condition may be fatal but once detected, the doctors will try to keep the foetal circulation patent as the baby awaits surgery to rectify the situation.

The most well-known heart problem affecting children in our country is rheumatic heart disease. This begins with a sore throat that remains untreated and never goes away. The immune system tries to fight the infection by forming antibodies against the causative bacteria.

However, the bacteria have similar protein coating to the membranes found in the heart and joints. So, the immune system fights these too, causing the disease known as Rheumatic Fever. Characteristically, rheumatic fever symptoms are fever, painful joints, rashes and a history of flu or sore throat 2 to 6 weeks earlier. This will be managed in hospital by a bed rest, antibiotics (if there is still infection) and anti-inflammatory drugs, e.g Aspirin.

But if it is not managed early, rheumatic fever can progress to a heart disease, especially if it affects the heart valves, making them incompetent or rigid. Depending on severity, sometimes surgery may be recommended. If your baby suffers from Rheumatic Fever, he must be closely monitored and be given medication on a monthly basis to avoid recurrence or complications. He also needs to have good oral hygiene to avoid infection to the heart.

How can we prevent this?

To prevent rheumatic heart disease, exercise high standards sanitation and ensure you treat sore throats in children very promptly. Studies have shown that the incidence of this condition in the developed world has dramatically reduced due to improved hygienic standards and availability of the anti-biotic therapy. Despite the fact that other acquired heart diseases are generally rare in childhood, it is vital to practice a healthy lifestyle and avoid any risk factors that may have a foundation in childhood only to appear later in the child’s life.

According to the Texas Heart Institute, the risk of children getting heart diseases can be lowered by maintaining a certain body weight, limiting their salt intake, increasing their level of activity and eating food with less fat and in proper amounts. Children below two years of age should not be denied fats and oils as they need them for brain development.

Also, warn them on the dangers of smoking to steer off heart disease in adulthood. Most smokers, according to the study, started the habit when they were teenagers. If children are empowered in their pre- teen years, then the probability of them smoking in adulthood is reduced. The same applies to healthy habits. Another outcome from the research is that most of the fat cells are formed in childhood. An obese child is likely to be an obese adult, and if he controls his weight in adulthood, it is the size of the cells he controls and not the amount. Mmmh, so there is something you can do to keep your baby’s heart healthy.

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