what does it mean when your heart is slightly enlarged?
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An enlarged heart may be the result of a short-term stress on the body, such as pregnancy, or a medical condition, such as the weakening of the heart muscle, coronary artery disease, heart valve problems or abnormal heart rhythms.
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Dilated Cardiomyopathy Definition A disorder in which the chambers of the heart are dilated (enlarged) because the heart muscle is weakened and cannot pump effectively. There are many causes, the most common being myocardial ischemia (not enough oxygen supplied to the heart muscle) due to coronary artery disease.
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Left ventricular hypertrophy or thickening of the heart muscle is a response to excess stress or workload. It can be associated with hypertension or heart valve disease. In some unusual instances, it can be related to other disease processes such as infiltrative diseases or genetic disorders.
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An enlarged liver can have many possible causes. An enlarged liver is one that's bigger than normal. The medical term is hepatomegaly (hep-uh-toe-MEG-uh-le). Rather than a disease, an enlarged liver is a sign of an underlying problem, such as liver disease, congestive heart failure or cancer.
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In rare instances, you may feel discomfort in your chest. Your chest might feel tight or constricted, or you may feel pain that radiates outward from your chest. In some cases, mitral valve stenosis may not cause any symptoms, or the symptoms may appear only during exercise.
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When blood can't flow freely to your heart, you can have chest pain (angina), irregular heart rhythms (arrhythmias) or a heart attack. Enlarged left heart. High blood pressure forces your heart to work harder to pump blood to the rest of your body. This causes part of your heart (left ventricle) to thicken.
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Cardiac distress is when the heart is overwhelmed due to the conditions it is under. Due to this stress, the heart will actually beat less or stop...
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Having an enlarged left atrium increases the risk of developing afib. Once someone is in afib, if the left atrium is very enlarged, it can be difficult getting the heart back into a normal heart rhythm.
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['Cardiomyopathy. This condition thickens your heart tissues.', "Heart attack. This occurs when your heart muscle's damaged when one or more of your arteries become blocked.", 'Coronary artery disease. ... ', 'Systolic heart failure. ... ', 'Heart valve disease.']
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The heart responds by increasing left ventricular internal diameter and left ventricular wall thickness. 14. Ventricular dilation is caused by volume overload. Hereby, new sarcomeres are added in-series to existing sarcomeres. Volume overload-induced cardiac hypertrophy is known as eccentric hypertrophy (figure 1).
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Unfortunately, sometimes an enlarged heart is truly abnormal. The heart can enlarge from a number of different causes. In children, the most common reason is some form of congenital heart defect. For example, a hole in the heart (or some other abnormality) may allow blood to shunt or recirculate back to the lungs.
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Someone having a heart attack may experience any or all of the following: Uncomfortable pressure, fullness or squeezing pain in the center of the chest. Discomfort or pain spreading beyond the chest to the shoulders, back, neck, jaw, teeth, or one or both arms, or occasionally upper abdomen. Shortness of breath.
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Enlarged heart, in heart failure As your heart weakens, such as in heart failure, it begins to enlarge, forcing your heart to work harder to pump blood to the rest of your body. An enlarged heart (cardiomegaly) isn't a disease, but rather a sign of another condition.
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In some cases of heart failure, your heart muscle may become damaged and weakened, and the ventricles stretch (dilate) to the point that the heart can't pump blood efficiently throughout your body. Over time, the heart can no longer keep up with the normal demands placed on it to pump blood to the rest of your body.
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When the myocardium as abnormally thickened, electrical activity takes longer to traverse throughout the whole heart, thus the duration of the QRS complex may be widened. This is referred to as "LVH with QRS widening".
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Sometimes in patients with heart failure, high pressures within the heart cause the fluid not to drain properly. The body, however, continues to produce pericardial fluid, leading to excess fluid around the heart (chylous pericardial effusion).
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If you have diastolic heart failure, your left ventricle has become stiffer than normal. Because of that, your heart can't relax the way it should. When it pumps, it can't fill up with blood as it's supposed to. Because there's less blood in the ventricle, less blood is pumped out to your body.