Download heart disease

For customers
Helping you understand…
heart disease
The British Heart Foundation estimates that 2.3 million people
are living with heart disease in the UK, and that it’s the leading
cause of death worldwide.
Keeping your heart healthy, whatever your age, is the most important thing you
can do to reduce the risk to you.
What is heart disease?
Heart disease is an umbrella term used for several conditions relating to the heart,
including:
• heart attack;
• angina;
• blocked arteries;
• cardiomyopathy; and
• cardiac arrest.
Helen Morris, our Underwriting and Claims Technical Manager, takes a closer look
at the critical illness events, the symptoms, risk factors and underwriting
implications.
Heart-related critical illness conditions
Critical illness protection covers many of the main heart conditions and treatments.
Heart-related illness is the second biggest cause of critical illness claims, accounting
for around 13.5% of claims received in 2014 and 11.5% in 2015.
Condition
Heart attack
Cardiac arrest
Cardiomyopathy
Description
A heart attack occurs when an artery within your heart
becomes blocked, starving the heart of blood and oxygen and
causing damage to the heart muscle. It’s also sometimes
referred to as acute coronary syndrome or myocardial
infarction (MI).
A cardiac arrest is when your heart stops pumping blood
around the body, leading to unconsciousness. A defibrillator is
often needed to restore your pulse and normal heart rhythm.
Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle. It can be
inherited, and has also been linked to infection and excessive
alcohol intake. It affects the size and shape of the heart and
can affect the way the electrical system makes the heart beat.
Page 1 of 3
Condition
Coronary artery
by-pass surgery
Heart valve
replacement
Aorta graft
surgery
Open heart
surgery
Description
If one or more of your arteries become blocked you could
suffer from angina or a heart attack. Coronary artery by-pass
surgery involves a surgeon grafting around the blockage using
a length of alternative blood vessel. The aim of the by-pass is
to restore the flow of oxygenated blood.
There are four valves in the heart that open and close as part
of the normal pumping action. Sometimes they become
diseased, resulting in a reduced pumping performance by the
heart and/or the valves leaking slightly or not closing properly
when they’re supposed to. Valve replacement is surgery to
replace the diseased valve with a new valve. The most
common types of replacement valves are artificial or animal
valves.
The aorta is the largest artery in the body that carries blood
from the heart to various parts of the body. Surgery might be
required if the aorta becomes diseased, or is damaged during
an accident.
Open heart surgery is when the chest is opened and surgery is
carried out on the heart muscle, valves, arteries, or other parts
of the heart (such as the aorta).
Symptoms
The symptoms of heart disease can vary from one person to another. You should
never ignore them - seek medical advice immediately.
Symptoms can include:
• chest pain or discomfort, which may spread to the arms, neck, jaw, stomach or
back;
• a dull pain, ache or ‘heavy’ feeling in the chest;
• chest pain or discomfort which feels like indigestion, but makes you feel
generally unwell; or
• feeling sick, sweaty, breathless, lightheaded, dizzy or generally unwell.
Risk factors
Risk factors are conditions or habits that make a person more likely to develop a
condition or disease. Certain risk factors can’t be changed, for example if you have
a family history of heart disease or just the fact that you’re growing older. But
there are some that can be controlled, such as:
• high blood pressure and cholesterol;
• smoking and alcohol levels;
• being overweight;
• being physically inactive;
• having an unhealthy diet; and
• diabetes.
Page 2 of 3
Underwriting heart disease
If you haven’t suffered from heart problems when you apply for life and/or critical
illness cover, an underwriter will consider the overall risk of you suffering from this
in the future. Like the medical profession, they’ll consider all the risk factors
mentioned on the previous page. One risk factor on its own isn’t normally a
concern, but two or three together increase the risk and can result in increased
policy payments.
For example, a healthy individual who has raised blood pressure that they’ve had
under control with treatment for the last six months will make standard policy
payments. Whereas an overweight individual who smokes and has raised blood
pressure despite treatment is a greater risk, so we’d offer rated terms, which
means their policy payments will be higher for both life and critical illness cover.
Unfortunately, if you’ve already been diagnosed with heart disease, critical illness
cover is generally unavailable. We’ll consider offering you rated terms for life cover,
depending on:
• the condition you’ve been diagnosed with;
• the age you were diagnosed;
• your age now; and
• how successful treatment has been.
An underwriter from our pre-submission underwriting helpline will be able to tell
you quickly and easily if we can consider providing cover. You can call them on
03457 83 54 73.
Find out more
Finding out you, or a loved one, has a heart condition can be a worrying time for all
involved. Your GP can give you useful phone numbers, information and support.
IP00271661/07/16