• Question: how does the bacteria get into the heart to form a disease ?

    Asked by anon-178535 to Emma, Jordan, Kate, Lucy, Pankaj, Samuel on 12 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Samuel Vennin

      Samuel Vennin answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      Most heart diseases are either congenital (people were born this way) or the results of an unhealthy lifestyle (for example, lack of exercising will lead to high blood pressure because the heart will have to pump harder to get someone moving; the substance contained in cigarettes causes our arteries to become smaller, hence smoking will also lead to a higher blood pressure).

      There is one heart disease I can think of that is called by bacteria: endocarditis. The bacteria travels through the blood that goes in and out of the heart. The bacteria enters the heart but doesn’t leave, it stays there and infects the first layer of the muscle surrounding the heart that we call the endocardium. There might be other similar diseases but like endocarditis, there would be very rare.

    • Photo: Emma Wellham

      Emma Wellham answered on 13 Jun 2018:

      Bacteria gets to heart in the blood, and in rare cases can infect the heart muscle or the layer surrounding the heart muscle called the pericardium. In most cases this can be treated well with antibiotics.

      Most heart problems are electrical problems (the heart cells not producing enough electrical signals that the heart needs to beat) plumbing problems (blockages in the heart arteries starving the heart muscle of oxygen) or problems with the way the heart formed before someone was born.

      Electrical problems we fix with pacemakers, plumbing problems we try to open the blockage, and problems with the way the heart formed, we try to fix with surgery, keyhole surgery or medicines, or in severe cases, people might need a new heart in a transplant.

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