Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a serious disease that leads to an increase in the thickness of the cardiac muscle, making it more rigid and with greater difficulty in pumping blood, which can lead to death.
Although hypertrophic cardiomyopathy has no cure, the treatment helps to relieve symptoms and prevent the problem from getting worse, preventing complications such as atrial fibrillation and even cardiac arrest, for example.
See 12 signs that can indicate heart problems.
Main symptoms
In most cases, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy does not show any signs or symptoms, and is often identified in a routine heart exam. However, some people may experience:
- Feeling of shortness of breath, especially when making physical efforts; Chest pain, especially during physical exercise; Palpitations or feeling of rapid heartbeat;
So, when any of these symptoms appears, it is advisable to go to the doctor to do the necessary tests, such as echocardiography or chest X-ray, which help to identify the problem and start the appropriate treatment.
Normally, with advancing age and hardening of the heart, it is also common for high blood pressure and even arrhythmias to arise, due to the alteration of the electrical signals in the heart muscle.
Because it happens
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is usually caused by a genetic alteration that causes excessive development of the heart muscle, which becomes thicker than normal.
The change that causes this disease can pass from parents to children, with a 50% chance of the children being born with the problem, even if the disease affects only one parent.
How the treatment is done
Thus, the cardiologist usually starts treatment with the use of remedies such as:
- Remedies for relaxing the heart, such as Metoprolol or Verapamil: decrease stress on the heart muscle and decrease the heart rate, allowing blood to be pumped more effectively; Remedies to control the heart rate, such as Amiodarone or Disopyramide: keep the heart rate stable, avoiding overwork by the heart; Anticoagulants, such as Warfarin or Dabigatran: are used when there is atrial fibrillation, to prevent the formation of clots that can cause infarction or stroke;
However, when the use of these drugs is not able to alleviate the symptoms, the doctor can use the surgery to remove a piece of the cardiac muscle that separates the two ventricles from the heart, facilitating the passage of blood and reducing the effort on the heart.
In the most severe cases, in which there is a great risk of cardiac arrest due to arrhythmia, it may be necessary to implant a pacemaker in the heart, which produces electric shocks capable of regulating the heart rhythm. Better understand how the pacemaker works.
