Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 18, 2025
If a medium-sized dose is given three or four times in twenty-four hours, it is sufficient and will often act for good. Whether calcium can do harm in a chronic endocarditis or an arteriosclerosis to offset the value that it seems to have in quieting the nervous system and in being of value to a weak or nervously irritable heart is a question which has not been decided.
As it acts at times almost as a specific in rheumatism, it would seem that it should be of value in the endocarditis caused by rheumatism. On the other hand, the endocarditis occurs during the second or third week of acute rheumatism, after the blood has been thoroughly saturated with salicylic acid.
Aortic disease, on the other hand, from the very fact of their strenuous life and occupations, is nearly three times more frequent in men than in women. If a chronic endocarditis has followed an acute condition, some slight permanent papillomas or warty growths may he left from the healed granulating or ulcerated surfaces.
Any cause which tends to induce arteriosclerosis may be a cause of chronic endocarditis, such as gout, syphilis, chronic nephritis, alcoholism, excessive use of tobacco, excessive muscular labor and hard athletic work. Lead is also another, now rather infrequent, cause. Severe infections may tend to make not only an arteriosclerosis occur early in life, but also a chronic endocarditis.
These myocardial changes are sometimes associated with chronic pericarditis and chronic endocarditis, and may accompany or follow valvular disease of the heart. Failure of compensation in valvular disease and dilatation of the heart are sequences which occur sooner or later. The heart frequently becomes more rapid, not only with exertion and change of position to the erect, but even after eating.
Of course systolic murmurs may be due to a disturbed condition of the blood, but if they occur with the above-mentioned symptoms and signs, endocarditis should be diagnosed. If the heart becomes seriously weak and the patient suffers much dyspnea, myocarditis should be known to be present with the endocarditis.
In acute rheumatism, however, the joint symptoms predominate, there is an absence of suppuration, and the pains and temperature yield to salicylates. The prognosis varies with the type of the disease, with its location the vertebræ, skull, pelvis, and lower jaw being specially unfavourable with the multiplicity of the lesions, and with the development of endocarditis and internal metastases.
Valvular disease at the aortic orifice is much less common than at the mitral orifice, and while stenosis or obstruction is less common from rheumatism or acute inflammatory endocarditis than is insufficiency of this valve, a narrowing or at least the clinical sign of narrowing, denoted by a systolic blow at the base of the heart over the aortic opening, is in arteriosclerosis and old age of frequent occurrence.
A complication which is so frequent should always be expected, and consequently warded off or prevented, if possible. Knowledge of the diseases which are most liable to cause endocarditis makes frequent heart examinations a necessity, to note when it arrives.
Like any other muscular tissue, the heart hypertrophies when it has more work to do, provided this work is gradually increased and the heart is not strained by sudden exertion. To hypertrophy properly the heart must go into training. This training is necessary in valvular lesions after acute endocarditis or myocarditis, and is the reason that the return to work must be so carefully graduated.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking