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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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Women With Abnormal Pulse In Neck Might Have Heart Disease! Heart disease is the number one killer around the world. In the United States, about 600,000 people die of heart disease every year (1 in every 4 deaths). In the United Kingdom, cardiovascular disease (heart disease, stroke, heart failure, cardiomyopathy, and atrial fibrillation) causes more than 161,000 deaths each year. Smoking, high blood pressure and high LDL (low density lipoprotein) cholesterol are the 3 key risk factors that can lead to heart disease. About half of Americans (49 percent) have at least one of these 3 risk factors. People with other medical conditions and lifestyle such as diabetes, overweight, obesity, poor diet, physical inactivity and excessive alcohol use also have a higher likelihood of getting heart disease. Nevertheless, heart disease can sometime be caused by bacterial infection. On November 14, 2013, researchers from the University of Saskatchewan reported in the ‘New England Journal of Medicine’ that women with abnormal pulses in their neck might indicate that they have heart disease. Such abnormal pulses are common and are caused by a heart disorder called tricuspid regurgitation, according to some practicing cardio surgeons. Under normal circumstances, a valve between the 2 chambers known as tricuspid valve prevents blood from flowing backward when blood flows from atrium (the right upper heart chamber) down into ventricle (the right lower heart chamber). The function of the tricuspid valve is to ensure the blood can flow only in one direction.
But when the tricuspid valve is malfunction, some blood can leak from the right ventricle back up into the right atrium, causing tricuspid regurgitation. The right atrium will then get bigger, and can change the pressure in nearby blood vessels leading to abnormal pulses seen in the neck veins. Tricuspid regurgitation might be due to any cause of pulmonary hypertension (high pressure in the lung circulation). It can also be found in people with a type of congenital heart disease called Ebstein's anomaly. Other less common causes include carcinoid tumors that release a hormone that damages the valve, rheumatoid arthritis, radiation therapy and rheumatic fever. More often, people with this condition have heart valve inflammation, or endocarditis, caused by a bacterial infection. The report mentioned a 33-year-old woman in Canada who had large, abnormal pulses visible in her neck. She had been previously diagnosed with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection in the heart valve, and was evaluated for replacement of the tricuspid valve. MRSA is a strain of staph bacteria that is resistant to the antibiotics normally used to treat such infections. It is fairly common to have staph bacteria on one’s skin or in nose. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one-third of the world's population have S. aureus bacteria on their bodies, and about 2 percent of people carry MRSA. The staph on a person's skin usually does not cause an infection or disease symptoms. However, problems can arise if the bacteria enter the body. Staph skin infections begin as a small, red bump and these infections can progress quickly, turning into swollen, painful abscesses, which doctors need to surgically drain. If the bacteria burrow deeper, they can cause infections throughout the body, including in the bloodstream, heart, bones, joints, lungs and surgical wounds, which can result in chest pain, fever and even death. While surgery was given to the woman mentioned above for a new heart valve and she recovered, not all patients with tricuspid regurgitation require surgery. Some patients can be treated with antibiotics without surgery. Besides active pulsing in the neck veins, tricuspid regurgitation can have other symptoms including decreased urine output, fatigue, tiredness, general swelling, swelling of the abdomen, swelling of the feet and ankles and weakness. Remember this, prompt treatment of disorders that can cause valve disease reduces the risk of tricuspid regurgitation.
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