What are the most common types of heart disease?

What are the most common types of heart disease?

Heart disease can affect any part of the heart and it's blood vessels. The most common kind, of course, is coronary artery disease (or atherosclerosis) affecting blood flow through the coronary arteries. But heart disease can also affect the heart muscle, it can affect the heart valves, it can affect the large vessels that come out of the heart – like the aorta, with aneurisms, and it can, in fact, affect even the sac around the heart, called the pericardium – a sac that has both a lining right on the heart and a larger sac around that can be affected by inflammation; causing pain in the chest that's a form of heart disease, but a much less serious form initially. The heart can also be affected by infections – so that the heart valves, for example, can be affected by what's called endocarditis: an infection of the heart valves with bacteria and that can actually destroy some of the heart valve tissue, resulting in leaky valves.