There are several ways of preventing heart disease with regards to adults like maintain a healthy diet that includes low consumption of fat and intake of food low in cholesterol. However, for children there are several other ways of preventing heart disease to protect their heart from further damage.
When a child experiences rheumatic fever, he/she is more likely to experience childrens rheumatic heart disease. This occurs between the age of five and fifteen. Rheumatic fever is the reason behind inflammation of the connective tissues of the body like the heart, joints, brain, as well as the skin.
When a child is hit by rheumatic fever, it can cause childrens rheumatic heart disease that blocks the valves of the heart making the mechanism of it to open and close difficult. In certain severe cases, it causes the enlargement of the heart thus making it difficult for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body causing a heart failure.
Aid For Childrens Rheumatic Heart Disease
If the parents feel their child is experiencing a strep throat, the immediate step must be to get it checked by a doctor and treat the possible infection. This is because a strep throat can lead to rheumatic fever if it is not treated with antibiotics at the earliest. Rheumatic fever once experienced by a child keeps recurring, which is why the lifelong usage of antibiotics comes into existence to avoid this recurrence.
There is no necessity that a rheumatic fever always leads to childrens rheumatic heart disease, or if the damage is done to the heart after the fever is over. Tests must be done to see if there is any damage done to the heart. A chest x-ray is one way of findings out. They look out for any kind of fluid in the heart or lungs that is a symptom of damage to the heart valves.
An echocardiogram done that pictures the heart through sound waves helps in testing childrens rheumatic heart disease. If there is a major damage done to the heart valves then surgery is the only option for the valves to be fixed and replaced appropriately. The best possible way to avoid this illness would be to get a treatment immediately after the child experiences a strep throat, and if symptoms persist like joint pain or inflammation after the strep then the child need to be taken back to perform some tests.