Hypertensive cardiovascular disease implies that the heart began to suffer from complications of hypertension (high blood pressure). Some of those complications are thickening of the heart muscle, valvular disease where the heart valves begin to leak and coronary artery disease where plaque forms in the blood vessels that supply blood to the heart. These ultimately lead to either progressive heart failure, or as in the case of your father to sudden cardiac death. The latter is usually related to coronary artery disease. It sounds like you have sudden cardiac death in your family and should see a cardiologist to further assess and modify your coronary artery disease risk factors.
A related discussion,
Anginal effect was started.
Thank you so much for your input.
♥ Flutter
Hypertensive Cardiovascular Disease
Can you please tell me what this means in Layman's terms? This is the cause of death on my father's death certficate. He was only 51 and I found him on his exercise bike in his basement on March 19th. I knew it was a heart attack or something and I plan on seeing his doctor to better educate my sister and I on what we're up against for ourselves and our children, but I'm anxious to know now. I'm also waiting (im)patiently for the detailed autopsy report.
Thank you so much, it means alot to know.
P.S. he suffered pericarditis when he was 21 and his father died at age 56
Calcium score is a marker that assesses for calcified plaque. Soft plaque will not be well detected by this modality and you are correct in saying that it is this plaque that predisposes patient to having significant heart attacks. It is the rupture of this plaque that leads to exposure of subendothelial structures that ultimately lead to clot formation and complete obliteration of blood flow to that part of the heart. In my opinion, calcium score will quickly fall out of favor in evaluating CAD. CT angiogram is slightly better because it evaluates for presence of any plaque. However, contrary to what most think about the relationship of the size of plaque to the development of a heart attack (the larger the plaque the higher the risk) most of the time heart attacks, especially those in younger patients occur in areas of mild to moderate plaque. So the CT angiogram or even a catheterization can't rule out future heart attacks. They can only assess for areas of severe obstruction that could potentially explain patients chest pain (not risk of heart attack) Of course, the higher the overall plaque burden the higher the risk of MI (based on probability). This would then lead to aggressive risk factor modification and initiation of ASA and beta blocker. Therefore, given your risk factor profile you should already be on those medications and work on CAD risk factor modification (exercising, eating well, lowering cholesterol to the minimum, not smoking and ruling out diabetes and high blood pressure). I am not sure that in the absence of chest pain getting any of those test (calcium score or CTA) would be useful at all.