Heart disease can be found at any age, even in newborns. To every age category has it’s own  characteristic forms of illness. The sickening of the heart in the second childhood at adolescents and young adults under 30 years, has as common cause an affection often met and followed by very serious consequences: the rheumatic infection produced is a virus, strep, that produces a disease called rheumatic fever. At  adults and elders the high number of illnesses due to cardiovascular disease is attributed to hypertension, frequently associated with atherosclerosis. The severity of hypertension consists in cardiac, kidney and cerebral applications, and also in the association with atherosclerosis and with rapid and progressive degradation of arterioles, like in the case of malignant form of arterial hypertension.



Causes of heart disease:
There are numerous causes of heart disease. One of them is the birth defects that are the result of environmental factors that cause  the heart to stop develop in the embryo. Among these factors are: rubella virus, which can cause congenital heart malformations in the fetus if the disease is pregnant in the first two months of pregnancy and syphilis. Recent studies have shown that respiratory virose are incriminated in the production of genetic mutations if the disease has been contacted in the first two months of pregnancy. And some medicinal substances can have similar effects when administered during early pregnancy.



Röntgen ray exposure, widely used in medicine, is one of the most potent teratogens agents known. For this reason, the use of radiological examinations in the initial period of pregnancy is contraindicated. Among the factors that may cause congenital heart malformations are also included vitamin deficiencies, and heredity.
At children and young people the most frequent cause is considered rheumatic fever or acute poliarticular rheumatism. The disease can be under a acute form, with fever and joint pain. Joints become hot, swollen and very painful. Inflammatory phenomena move from one joint to another.

If a vigorous treatment it’s not establish at the first signs of disease, this form of severe rheumatism can reach the heart, giving the final damage. Rheumatic lesions are frequently localized in the aortic or mitral orifice, causing narrowing or lack of tightness, meaning stenosis or insufficiency.

When the rheumatic infection includes the heart muscle (rheumatic  myocarditis ), cardiac rhythm disturbances occur frequently. Localization of the pericardium  infection ( pericarditis ) causes inflammation of the foil from which is made, with the appearance of a liquid in the pericardial sac, which acts as a buffer on the heart.  Prevention of rheumatic infection is possible by detecting streptococcal carriers among children and treatment with penicillin, by providing those who suffer from this disease, preventive treatment with oily penicillin administrated at rare intervals, but regularly.



On the valvular lesions produced by the streptococcus can be located in the course of infectious disease outbreaks or from focused infections from different  various microbes, which cause a serious complication, slow endocarditis, deadly disease in the past, now healed through the use of large amounts of antibiotics.  At elders and adults the high number of deaths due to heart disease is attributed to other causes: hypertension, arteriosclerosis, syphilis. There may be the possibility that the heart to suffer because of other base affections, like pulmonary chronic diseases, diabetes, hyperthyroidism or other endocrine disorders.

The heart, the pump that provides blood circulation in the body, is a muscular organ, hollow, consisting of four cavities, two upper (atria) and two lower (ventricles). Each atrium communicates with the ventricle on the same side through a hole provided with valves which have the function of vents, valves allow blood to flow one way, namely from the atria into the ventricles. The orifice from the right has three valves and one of the only two left. Some inflammatory heart diseases, most commonly rheumatism, may result in damage to these valves: affliction hole, stenosis, thus hampering blood flow from atrium into ventricle or preventing the tightness in the moment of the valves close in, insufficiency, which results in returning blood backwards, from the ventricle to atrium, sometimes both types of lesions may be associated.



The heart develops an enormous work, and for this its muscular walls must be well supplied with oxygenated blood. To this end, immediately after leaving the aorta artery from the left ventricle, two branches are split that surround the  surface of the heart like a crown (actually they were called coronary arteries) and then dividing into branches increasingly finer, forming a rich network of capillary vessels around the heart muscle fibers. Damaging the  coronary arteries ruins the feeding the heart muscle, as  it happens in heart diseases known as angina, myocardial infarction, chronic coronary.

Any anatomical or functional elements may have different factors of disease aggression, that’s why the heart diseases are very different between them.
In the category of sick people named cardiovascular patients, between all those who have signs of illness from heart and blood vessels and persons who are discovering a problem or an injury to the heart or vessels, without suffering too much that they sometimes have no obvious pain.



The symptoms of heart disease are different not only in relation to the structural element that suffered the greatest extent (myocardial, pericardium, valves, coronary arteries, etc..), but also in relation to the stage in which the disease is, there are differences high between early stage and advanced. This is because the heart does not use full force in all circumstances available, it has an important reserve that is utilized only in special circumstances, like physical effort. So, heart’s function is sometimes provided as if the body would be healthy.



These patients of heart disease are known under the name of compensated or latent. If  the disease produced changes exceed certain limits, heart function is disturbed and certain symptoms begin to appear that may highlight the sickness. As you can see,there are many difference between heart disease symptoms. The symptoms are different from person to person, but also the heart disease signs get different while the disease is evolving.