Hypertensive heart disease is a serious medical condition that effects 7 out of 1,000 Americans. It is a life threatening complication of high blood pressure. It occurs when elevated blood pressure levels thicken the heart muscle, decreasing its ability to pump blood. The condition is often life threatening by the time people find out that they have hypertensive heart disease. That’s why it’s important to be able to identify this condition.
Instructions
Identify Hypertensive Heart Disease
1. Learn the symptoms of this condition. The symptoms of hypertensive heart disease typically appear during the advanced stages of hypertension (high blood pressure). They include shortness of breath during physical activity, walking at night with shortness of breath, needing to sleep with your head elevated in order to avoid shortness of breath, rapid pulse, heart palpitations, cough which may produce bloody mucous, fatigue or fainting, swelling of the feet and ankles, and urinating more frequently at night.
2. Look for signs of ischemic heart disease. This is condition is caused by hypertensive heart disease. Symptoms of this disease include nausea, sweating, dizziness, and shortness of breath.
3. Be aware of the symptoms of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. This condition is also caused by hypertensive heart disease. Symptoms include chest pain, fainting particularly during exercise, light-headedness especially after physical activity, dizziness, heart palpitations, fatigue, and shortness of breath when lying down.
4. If you have high blood pressure and you develop any of the above symptoms, contact your doctor immediately. Your doctor can detect signs of heart disease during a physical exam, by looking for signs such as an enlarged heart or an abnormal heart beat. A diagnosis can be made using an echocardiogram, a chest x-ray, or a coronary angiogram.
Tags: shortness breath, blood pressure, heart disease, hypertensive heart, hypertensive heart disease, high blood, high blood pressure