A heart murmur is not always a sign of heart disease, it is a common clinical finding even in healthy individuals, but in some cases it can be a symptom of a valve or heart problem
The heart is a hollow organ with walls almost exclusively of a muscular nature and an average life of about seventy years. He has the task of beating about 2.5 billion times throughout his life, managing to perform a strenuous job, which begins to be felt as soon as the 60-year-old threshold is exceeded.
In the course of life, however, through achest auscultation with the stethoscope, the doctor may notice an abnormal sound. Normally, in fact, the heart produces sounds caused by valve closure during the cardiac cycle. The flow of blood through the atria, ventricles and vascular structures, however, occurs silently. When the expert, however, finds a noise audible when blood flow becomes turbulent in cardiovascular structures, we speak of heart murmur.
Here, but what are the causes of this disorder?
Heart murmur, different and variable symptoms
The heart murmur is referred to asinnocent‘, or functional, if it simply concerns an accelerated passage of blood in the cardiac structures not attributable to cardiovascular anomalies. And it can occur in physiological conditions, for example in childhood, in the presence of anemia, fever or severe stress, in the event of pregnancy or hyperthyroidism and in healthy, lean sports subjects.
When instead the heart murmur is pathological its manifestation is a consequence of anatomical and functional alterations of the cardiovascular structures. In this case it may be a congenital problem due to defects of the cardiac structures, a congenital malformations of the valves or it could be acquired murmur as a result of another triggering cause. In the latter case it can be linked to very different causes and which may concern age, degenerative changes or calcifications of the valve tissue or calcium deposits in the aorta due to atherosclerosis, heart muscle pathologies, infectious or chronic inflammatory, autoimmune, rheumatological and connective tissue pathologies or post-infarction complications, radiotherapy sequelae, drug abuse or other toxic substances.
What are the main causes of heart murmur – tantasalute.it
When the murmur is innocent it is generally asymptomatic and, especially if found in children, it can disappear during growth. In other cases it may cease with the disappearance of the trigger.
When instead the breath is organic the symptoms are related to the heart disease that triggered it. And they can range, for example in infants and children, from stunted growth to excessive thinness, from poor appetite to cyanosis of the hands and lips.
Other symptoms can be a sense of fatigue and chronic tiredness regardless of the efforts made; dizziness or syncope following exertion; dyspnoea on exertion or even at rest, but also palpitations, sloping edema, weight gain, jugular turgor, hepatomegaly and unjustified excessive sweating.
Initially it is not uncommon for the pathology to be asymptomatic. In conditions of medium severity the symptoms can be modest and episodic or only due to an effort, up to being constants even in conditions of rest in the most serious or acute forms.
It is undoubtedly a very important one correct interpretation the characteristics of the heart murmurs to proceed with any medical decisions. In fact, the intensity of the heart murmur, its location with respect to the heart valves, the tone, the moment of appearance, the duration and any factors capable of modifying it are evaluated.
Such assessments are also accompanied by an accurate medical history in order to make differential diagnoses. In some cases, the doctor may request further investigation with a color Doppler echocardiogram, a basal electrocardiogram, a transesophageal echocardiogram, an exercise test and other diagnostic methods to adequately intervene with any drug treatments.