Do you think all children should be routinely screened for heart disease?
2006-11-15 11:06:05 · 1 answers · asked by Twizz2004 1 in Health ➔ Diseases & Conditions ➔ Heart Diseases
No. Children's physiology is different from adults and arterial plaqueing does not start to form until the teenage years. It would be like screening the elderly for sexually transmitted diseases...lots of screening with very little result.
The problem is not that we are not finding heart disease if we are looking, its that there are plenty of people in their 50's and 60's who think that smoking, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, diabetes, and a strong family history are nothing to worry about...and oh yeah, this chest tightness isn't that bad, therefore it must not be anything. On the other hand you have perfectly healthy 20 year olds every day on this forum wondering if that sharp pain in their chest might be a heart attack.
In sum education would go much, much farther than routine screening for an inappropriate population.
2006-11-15 12:03:06 · answer #1 · answered by c_schumacker 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋