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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