How to Talk to Your Family About Their Heart Health History

Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM) is the most common genetic heart disease, affecting about 1 in every 500 people, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). In people with HOCM, genetic variants cause the heart’s walls to thicken and stiffen, blocking blood from flowing freely from the left ventricle to the aorta. This, in turn, results in shortness of breath and chest pain (especially during physical activity), abnormal heart rhythms, lightheadedness, dizziness, and fainting, and can worsen over time. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] If a parent has HOCM, offspring have a 50% chance of inheriting it. That means knowing your family’s heart health history is crucial: If your doctor is aware that you have relatives with HOCM, they can “screen family members early on, before they get sick or have any cardiac complications” using EKG and echocardiogram, says Dr. Ali Nsair, co-director of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Clinic at UCLA Health. About 60% of the time, genetic testing can identify a specific change in a gene that causes HOCM. Even if you (or your kids) test negative for the particular genetic variant your parent with HOCM has, you can still be screened every few years with EKGs, echocardiograms, and visits to a cardiologist to make sure complications haven’t popped up, Nsair says. And it’s not only HOCM that can cluster in families. “A lot of what ails us is in some sense heritable,&...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Evergreen freelance healthscienceclimate Source Type: news