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.