How does having a heart condition affect the rest of my body?

How does having a heart condition affect the rest of my body?

Rose Marie Robertson, MD, FAHA, FACC, FESC (Chief Science Officer and Past President of the Board of American Heart Association) gives expert video advice on: What are the most common types of heart disease?; Is heart disease genetic?; How does having a heart condition affect the rest of my body? and more...

Let's talk first about coronary artery disease, or athersclerosis, is a disorder that's wide spread. So, if you had narrowings in the coronary arteries, you almost certainly have athersclerosis in other blood vessels as well. If you have them in the arteries going to the brain, they can certainly lead to strokes. If you have them in the blood vessels going to the kidneys, they can, in fact, make high blood pressure worse and affect kidney function. If you have them in the blood vessels going to the legs, they can affect the blood flow there, so that you have pain when you walk, or you may even have poor enough blood flow that amputations are needed. The eyes can be affected, one can become blind if blood vessels are affected by athersclerosis. So, heart disease, of the kind, that we call athersclerosis or coronary disease is often associated with problems in blood vessels in the rest of the body. Now, if the heart disease isn't related to athersclerosis, but is one of the many other forms of heart disease, then the primary way in which that affects the rest of the body is by the heart's function, and whether the heart is able to pump blood around sufficiently, so that it can supply the needs of the body, when you exercise or do physical activity, or really any sort of activity. If there is a disease causing a problem with the heart that also affects other parts of the body, like diabetes, or systemic lupus, then you can have affects both in the heart and other parts of the body, actually caused by the other disorder itself.