What are heart murmurs in adults?
We all read or heard talking about heart murmurs in adults, and many
of us are curious to find out if they have this dysfunction. A few know
the true meaning of this condition, that’s why when our physician tells
us we have heart murmurs either we think we suffer from a devastating
disease, either we ignore it, but none of this reaction is normal. Next
we will clarify the meaning and the cause for heart murmurs, in order
to prepare people that might be diagnosed with this disorder to
understand and deal their condition properly.Heart murmurs in adults refer to the abnormal sounds heard by doctors when they listen to the heartbeats with a stethoscope. In medical practice, hearing heart murmurs in adults raises the suspicion of heart valve pathology, but sometimes these abnormal heart sounds can occur in other conditions like a defect in the heart wall, anemia, fever etc. When there is no heart modification that can explain the murmurs, they are called functional. Because this condition can occur in other pathologies beside hear disorder, everytime we suspect a heart murmurs in adults we should check its presence with an echocardiography examination.
Heart murmurs affect both children and adults and are recognized as the “noise” heard between the two normal heart sounds. If the murmur occurs after the first heart sound is called systolic, which means it occurs during heart contraction, and if it occurs after the second heart sound is called diastolic and this means it occurs while heart is in its relaxation period. The classification into systolic and diastolic is important because it indicates whether we are facing a valve stenosis (narrowing of the heart valve) or insufficiency (the valves fail to close properly, letting blood to flow back into the heart chambers). There are other classifications for heart murmurs in adults, but those medical terms are more important for the specialists.
Why do heart murmurs in adults occur and how we deal with them?
As we explained above, in most of the cases heart murmurs in adults occur when there is a heart pathology:- heart valve narrowing or closure impairment, in this case the blood flow becomes turbulent and makes a noise that we call it murmur,
- a defect in heart wall-a congenital defect that occurs in children, allowing blood to flow from one side of the heart to the other, determining blood with oxygen and blood with carbone dioxide to mix. Sometimes this condition can remain undiagnosed until late adulthood, because it is a small defect and doesn’t cause symptoms, but in many cases is diagnosed soon after birth, being recognized as a prolonged murmur (noise) heard during heart auscultation and needs surgical correction. Another type of heart murmur heard in children is the one determined by the ductus arteriosus persistence (a connection between aorta and pulmonary artery in the uterine life).
- other condition like anemia or fever can determine heart murmurs in adults, because they determine turbulent blood flow, but this murmur disappears once the condition is treated.
