CHILDREN’S HEALTH: INNOCENT HEART MURMURS
Symptom: Extra sounds made by the heart that are known not to indicate an abnormality
Home care: No home care is required for an innocent murmur.
Precautions:
- Believe your doctor’s assurance that innocent murmurs are normal.
- Try not to be alarmed by the long medical names given to innocent murmurs.
- Most innocent murmurs disappear by the time the child is a teenager.
A heart murmur is an extra sound made by the heart as it pumps. A heart murmur may indicate abnormalities in the heart, or it may simply be a normal sound caused by turbulence as the blood rushes through the heart. The sounds that do not indicate heart disease or abnormalities are called “innocent murmurs,” “insignificant murmurs”, or “functional murmurs.” They are perfectly normal. Some experts believe that almost every healthy child has at least one innocent murmur, and if the child will stay still long enough in a quiet room a doctor will eventually be able to hear it. Other experts put the figure lower, at half of all normal children. As the child grows, the extra sound or sounds usually become increasingly hard to hear. By the time the child is a teenager, the murmur usually disappears, or becomes so quiet it cannot be detected. Only 15 to 20 percent of innocent murmurs continues into adolescence or adulthood.
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Categories: General health | Tags: General health
