Hypertension is a terrible disease and a risk to health. This disease is a condition that will disrupt health and reduce the quality of life. Especially if it happens to your baby who is still so young. I can’t bear to see the baby is made inconvenient to endure pain and is rendered helpless by the disease that is eating away at his body.
Is a disease of pulmonary hypertension or pulmonary hypertension that does not only occur in adults. However, this condition can affect children and even babies. Seeing the condition of your little one limply will certainly make all parents feel worried about this condition. Therefore, prompt and alert handling is necessary to overcome this condition.
Unlike hypertension in general, pulmonary hypertension is a condition of hypertension that occurs in the lungs so that this condition also makes symptoms visible to the naked eye. This of course will at least be an advantage for sufferers and parents who have children with the same disease to be able to detect symptoms earlier. Where a similar condition is not found in general hypertension. Knowing the symptoms of this disease condition is expected to make parents more alert and alert in discussing this problem with a doctor so that early treatment can be done immediately.
What Is Pulmonary Hypertension?
Hypertension or pressure high blood pressure it is no longer strange to the ears but often many people ignore one of these deadly diseases. Hypertension is a condition in which blood pressure rises above normal limits and is often associated with increased blood vessels.
Meanwhile, pulmonary hypertension or pulmonary hypertension is a pressure condition high blood pressure which affects the arteries in the lungs and the right side of the heart where the blood vessel pressure is abnormal. In this hypertensive condition, the arteries supply the depressed blood so that the blood vessels increase. This causes it to be difficult for blood to pass through the lungs so that this condition forces the heart to work harder to reduce this pressure.
Although many attack adults at productive age. However, pulmonary hypertension can indeed affect children and babies. In newborns, this symptom is often difficult to detect because there are no significant signs of this condition. For this reason, further health checks need to be done to find out more about your little one’s condition.
Knowing the Causes of Pulmonary Hypertension in Children
In general, the cause of hypertension is difficult to know in more detail because usually the one that often causes pulmonary hypertension is the left heart due to heart valve disorders such as regurgitation or backflow and narrowing of the eye valve (stenosis). Meanwhile, another cause that triggers this condition is HIV, a lung disease suffered by the baby that can reduce oxygen and cause pulmonary hypertension to occur. Not only that, interestitital lung disease, sleep apnea and new chronic obstructive diseases can also trigger this kind of hypertension.
Symptoms of Pulmonary Hypertension in Children
Clinical symptoms in infants and children who suffer from pulmonary hypertension can be different from those felt by adults. In babies they can show symptoms due to decline cardiac output (CO) this condition makes them lose their appetite, lethargy, tachypnea, nausea and vomiting, iritable, failure to thrive and many more.
Meanwhile, a baby or child may experience synosis when they are on the move or while they are resting. This condition occurs as a result of blood flow from right to left. Meanwhile in children, shortness of breath can be the most common symptom, especially when your child is doing physical exercise due to failure to increase CO when oxygen demand in the tissues increases.
Pulmonary hypertension in children often does not show symptoms that are specific enough. These symptoms are usually difficult to distinguish from other symptoms in similar lung or heart disease. The main symptoms of this condition can be physical exercise intolerance and fatigue. Where this condition indicates the inability to increase cardiac output during your little one doing activities. Sometimes sufferers who experience this hypertension condition also feel pain in the precordial chest, dizziness, headaches or in certain conditions this condition makes them faint.
Diagnosis of Pulmonary Hypertension
The diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension can be made based on the history and physical examination performed by a doctor. Therefore, parents who have children with hypertension need to bring their little one to the doctor for a check-up for further physical examination to find out about this condition. Meanwhile, to diagnose pulmonary hypertension, other causes that can increase pulmonary pressure need to be excluded, such as chronic lung disease, persistent upper airway obstruction and other liver diseases.
Factors that Increase the Risk of Pulmonary Hypertension in Children
There are several factors that can give a high probability of a child or newborn experiencing pulmonary hypertension. Some of these conditions include:
- Derivative factors. Children suffering from pulmonary hypertension can first be triggered by heredity or genetics. If there are two or more members of your family who have a history of the same disease or have a lineage that has had the cause of the PH gene mutation, the child’s risk of developing pulmonary hypertension will be greater
- Gender Factor. Idiopatih PAH and PAH that can be inherited (also known as familial PAH) are 2.5 times more common in women than in men.
- Height. Those who live in highland areas such as mountains and hills will be at greater risk of contracting this disease.
- Other disease factors. Other diseases such as congenital heart disease, liver disease, connective tissue disorders such as lupus and lung disease usually make it easier for sufferers to develop conditions for pulmonary hypertension.
- Medicine and poison. Some consumption of certain drugs such as illegal drugs or appetite suppressant drugs can trigger pulmonary hypertension in a person.
Those are some of the things that can be conveyed from this discussion. In essence, checking the health of your little one by consulting a doctor is important because the symptoms of this disease are usually similar to other conditions of health complaints. In addition, to be able to diagnose pulmonary hypertension, doctors generally need to carry out a further physical examination. For that, bring your little one along for a health consultation and examination to the doctor.
Thus, I hope this discussion is useful and can provide sufficient information for you. The most important thing is to always be vigilant and always take care of the health condition of your love fruit so that disease is always away from it.
