Five Heart Diseases You Should Know & What does your Insurance Plan Cover?

The heart is one of the most important organs in our body. Our heart is like the body’s engine room that pumps blood throughout the body. Our body has a network of cells which stretches across a distance of nearly 100,000 kilometers.

Blood flows through all this distance, and at the center of all these functions is the heart. Did you know, that for a person with an average life span, the heart beats 2.5 billion times in total? For keeping the heart healthy and efficient, optimal care is mandatory.  

Some of the common heart-related issues people face are:

• Heart Attack
• Coronary bypass surgery
• Heart transplant
• Atrial Septal Defect (ASD)
• Cardiac arrest

 As the heart is vital in one’s body, let us try to understand some of the most common heart diseases one could fall a victim to. 

Heart attack:

Heart attack is also known as myocardial infarction. A heart attack is a medical emergency, and immediate treatment is required. In this condition, blood clots are formed, and they restrict blood flow from the heart to various organs and tissues. If blood is not passed on throughout the body, the tissues begin losing oxygen thereby, making the person die.

 Some of the symptoms that help you to realize if you are undergoing such a condition are – feeling tightness in the chest, neck, arms, and may also experience fatigue, abnormal heartbeats, and anxiety. If the patient is not taken to the emergency room at a fast pace it may lead to the death of the person. For treating a patient, various surgeries such as heart valve surgery, heart bypass surgery, a heart transplant may also take place.

 Treating a heart attack condition is an expensive affair and cannot be afforded by everyone. 

Coronary bypass surgery:

In this condition, one of your heart’s arteries is blocked it might happen due to a health condition you are suffering. Due to which you may face symptoms such as falling short of breath, chest pain, and more.

 In recent times, due to development in the scientific and technology field, the risk associated with a bypass surgery has reduced. The seriousness has come down, and treatment efficiency has increased. While treating the patient, the doctor reroutes a healthy blood vessel from your arm, leg, or chest. The blood vessel is then connected to the heart.

The new pathway thereby created does not cure the blocked artery but does help the heart function more efficiently and reduce the risk of heart dying.

Heart transplant:

Under this surgical procedure, there is a replacement of a deceased person’s heart with a relatively healthy one. The foreign heart can be of a person who is dead but has chosen to donate their organs, although this surgical donation is time-bound and needs to be done within a certain period.

A person who has undergone heart failure may need to undergo heart transplant surgery. In the operation, the patient is set up on a heart and lung machine which lets the blood flow throughout the body even when the heart is the organ being worked on. Once the work is done, the new heart is inserted and sewn. After checking all the heart chambers and arteries the patient is then removed from the heart and lung machine.

 The patient is then kept into observation for a minimum of 10-15 days and is given discharge after the 16th day if the patient can move around and the body has accepted the organ.

 In some cases, if the body realizes that the organ is foreign and not like the others then the immune system starts rejecting and attacking the organ thereby, destroying it. For accepting the organs, the patients are given various medicines.

Atrial Septal Defect (ASD):

Under this condition, the patient suffering from the diseases causes the person who has holes in their heart. The holes are in the walls between the two upper chambers of one’s heart. The defect might have taken place in the woman’s fetus while the development of the child’s heart. The hole causes an increase in the blood flow to the lungs

 To cure the condition, surgery might be necessary. Some of the symptoms of such a condition are – shortness of breath, skipped beats, stroke, fatigue, swelling of legs, and more. For treating this condition cardiac catheterization surgery is undergone. Open heart surgery is also possible if necessary.

The catheterization surgery is done using a “patch” and a special septal repair device that is permanently placed in the heart that covers the hole. The surgery may last up to 3 hours.

Cardiac arrest:

Cardiac arrest is a very common disease and can cause the death of a person easily if not treated properly. In this disease, the heart of a person abruptly stops beating. The situation observes that there is a sudden loss of blood, as the heart fails to pump blood.

Symptoms such as unconsciousness, abnormal or absent breathing indicate that a person is facing a cardiac arrest. The situation occurs when a deceased person’s electrical system malfunctions. If the person is not taken to the hospital immediately or given CPR (Cardiopulmonary resuscitation) then it may lead to serious damage. A doctor generally uses a defibrillator to get the person back to consciousness.

Under 9 minutes if no measure is taken it leads to serious brain damage, and after 10 minutes the chances of survival are very low.

Heart insurance plans:

According to a report authored by the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 4.50 crore people in India suffer a cardiac condition. People aged less than 50 years are also facing heart conditions. To reduce the number of people suffering from heart diseases and providing them the said necessary treatments without worrying about the expenses, heart insurance plans are a must. These plans provide the meaningful coverage that is required. Many people are subscribing to such policies as they work in people’s best interest.

The above mentioned five heart diseases are purely illustrative. The actual number of cardiac diseases prevalent in the real world is many more. The insurance cover offered under these heart insurance plans provides vast coverage and encompasses various and all expenses related to heart conditions.

Some of the specific insurance plans for heart diseases that are available are:

• Care Heart Plan
• ICICI Pru Heart Protect Plan.
• Star Cardiac Care Plan.
• Max Bupa CritiCare Plan.