About Heart Conditions
The heart is a strong muscle about the size of your fist that pumps blood around the body. It sits inside the chest and is protected by the ribcage. The heart has four different areas, or chambers. These chambers are connected to each other by valves that control how much blood enters each chamber at any one time. The valves open and shut with every beat. As the valves shut to control the flow of blood through the heart, they make the sound you recognize as your heartbeat.
Depending on a person's age, the heart beats about 60 to 120 times every minute. Each heartbeat is really two separate sounds: lub-dub, lub-dub. Your heart goes "lub" with the closing of the valves that control blood flow from the upper chambers to the lower chambers. Then, as the valves controlling blood going out of the heart close, your heart goes "dub."
The heart is the center of the cardiovascular system. Through the body's blood vessels, the heart pumps blood to all of the body's cells. The blood carries oxygen, which the cells need. Cardiovascular disease is a group of problems that occur when the heart and blood vessels aren't working the way they should.
What Is a Heart Murmur?
A heart murmur is a whooshing sound between the beats that a doctor hears through a stethoscope. The whoosh is just an extra noise that the blood makes as it flows through the heart. Doctors usually discover murmurs during regular checkups or when kids see the doctor because they're sick.
Just like kids, murmurs have grades. Grade 1 is the softest-sounding murmur, and Grade 6 is the loudest. A murmur graded 4, 5, or 6 is so loud you can actually feel a rumbling from it under the skin if you put your hand on the person's chest
What Happens If You Have a Murmur?
More than half of all children have a heart murmur at some time in their lives and most heart murmurs don't mean anything is wrong. Doctors may call these "innocent," "functional," or "normal" murmurs. They are caused by blood rushing through the valves in a normal heart and are nothing to worry about.
One common type of normal murmur is Still's murmur, named for the doctor who first described it. This murmur is most often heard in healthy children ages 3 to 7.
A normal murmur can get louder when the blood flows faster through the heart, like when kids have a fever or run around. That's because an increase in body temperature or activity makes the heart pump more blood. When your temperature goes down, the murmur may get quieter or even disappear.
It can be easier to hear heart murmurs in kids because they have less fat, muscle, and bone between the murmur and the doctor's stethoscope. Many normal murmurs become harder to hear as children grow older, and some eventually disappear.
Even though most murmurs do not mean anything is wrong, sometimes a heart problem can cause a murmur. The heart may have a hole in it, a heart valve may leak, or a valve may not open all the way. If your doctor thinks your heart murmur could be due to a heart problem, you will need to see a paediatric cardiologist. This kind of doctor knows a lot about children's hearts.
Information from – www.kidshealth.org
Personal & Parental Experiences
Hannah - Supra Ventricular Tachycardia: read more...
Lisa - Atrial Septal Heart Defect: read more...
Hayley - CCAM, BPS & NYSTAGMUS: read more...
Charity Links
British Heart Foundation - www.bhf.org.uk
Our vision is of a world in which people do not die prematurely of heart disease.We'll achieve this through pioneering research, vital prevention activity and ensuring quality care and support for everyone living with heart disease.
Kids Health - www.kidshealth.org
If you're looking for information you can trust about kids and teens that's free of "doctor speak," you've come to the right place. KidsHealth is the most-visited site on the Web for information about health, behaviour, and development from before birth through the teen years.
