Is an enlarged heart serious?

Many people don't know much about cardiac hypertrophy. In fact, cardiac hypertrophy is divided into two types: enlargement and hypertrophy. A small number of patients will show coexistence of both. Hypertension or hereditary myocardial hypertrophy will cause this hypertrophy symptom.

1. What is cardiac hypertrophy? The size of our heart is related to our height and weight. Its volume is about the same size as our fist. From a chest X-ray we can see that the heart is located slightly to the left of the center of the chest. The width of a normal heart is less than 50% of the width of the chest cavity (cardio-lung ratio).

2. Enlarged heart

The so-called expansion of the "cavity" is a bit like the space of a room becoming bigger, but the walls of the room (heart muscles) do not become thicker, and sometimes the myocardium becomes thinner. This condition is usually caused by the heart muscle losing its original elasticity, causing the heart to enlarge due to increased blood flow and pressure. Common causes include myocarditis, heart valve insufficiency, hyperthyroidism and vitamin B1 deficiency.

3. Cardiac hypertrophy

If we use a room as an analogy, an enlarged heart is like the muscles of the walls becoming thicker, but the space in the room does not increase, and sometimes it even becomes smaller, but the entire heart appears larger than normal. Common causes of this symptom are narrowing of the heart's outlet (such as aortic valve stenosis), increased peripheral vascular resistance (such as hypertension) and myocardial disease (such as hereditary hypertrophic cardiomyopathy).

4. How to diagnose

Doctors can sometimes detect cardiomegaly during a physical examination. Most cases of cardiomegaly can be diagnosed by further performing an electrocardiogram and chest X-ray. For a more accurate diagnosis, cardiac ultrasound is the most accurate.

5. Treatment

Cardiac hypertrophy is caused by different diseases (lesions of the heart itself, such as myocarditis, valvular heart disease, hypertension, etc., and diseases other than the heart, such as hyperthyroidism), so it is the result of the disease, not the cause. To treat cardiac hypertrophy, it is necessary to find out the underlying cause and give different treatments for different causes. For example, cardiomegaly is caused by high blood pressure. As long as the blood pressure is controlled to normal, the cardiomegaly will gradually improve. Therefore, we see whether the patient is taking the medicine well and whether the blood pressure is well controlled. We can also use whether the cardiomegaly has improved as the basis for evaluation.