Cardiovascular Disease Flashcards
What is cardiovascular disease?
General term used to describe disease associated with the heart and blood vessels
Cardiovascular diseases include:
• aneurysms
• thrombosis
• myocardial infarction
• stroke
What is coronary heart disease?
Type of cardiovascular disease that occurs when coronary arteries have lots of atheromas in them which restricts blood flow to the heart muscle
How are atheromas formed?
• Following damage, usually caused by high blood pressure, to the artery endothelium there will be the accumulation of fatty deposits (including cholesterol from LDLs) called atheroma under the endothelium at the site of the damage ( i.e fatty deposits build up in the walls of the artery
What happens if the atheroma breaks?
If the atheroma breaks through the inner lining of the artery, it forms a plaque which roughens the wall of artery and reduces the lumen size of artery. This restricts blood flow, which causes the blood pressure to increase
What is an aneurysm?
• a balloon like swelling of the artery
• it starts with the formation of atheromas. Atheroma plaque damages and weakens arteries, they also narrow arteries increasing blood pressure
• when blood travels through a weakened artery at high pressure it may push the inner layers of the artery through the outer elastic layer to form an aneurysm. This may burst causing a haemorrhage (bleeding)
What is thrombosis?
The formation of a blood clot.
An atheroma plaque can rupture the endothelium of the artery damaging the artery wall.
Platelets accumulate at the site of damage and form a blood clot. Thus clot can cause complete blockage of the artery lumen or block a vessel elsewhere in the body
What is myocardial infarction (heart attack)?
• If the atheroma becomes unstable, a piece may break off damaging the artery wall and leading to a blood clot forming.
• If the blood clot blocks the coronary artery, the heart muscle is starved of blood, receiving no oxygen and glucose
• symptoms include pain in the chest and upper body, shortness of breath and sweating
• if large areas of the heart muscle are affected, complete heart failure can occur - this is often fatal
What is a stroke?
Death of part of the brain tissue due to lack of oxygen and glucose being delivered to the tissue because of either:
• blockage caused by a blood clot travelling to the arteries in the brain resulting in loss of blood flow to part of the brain
• artery bursting (haemorrhage)
What are stroke symptoms?
Think FAST
Face = face distorts normally on one side
Arms = weakness of limbs on one side of the body
Speech = difficulty speaking
Time = to call the hospital asap, there will be sudden confusion
What are risk factors of cardiovascular disease?
• age - risk increases with age
• gender - men under 50 at higher risk than women of same age
• cigarette smoking - both carbon monoxide and nicotine found in cigarette smoke increases the risk of
• hypertension (high blood pressure) - increases risk of damage to artery linings
• obesity
• physical inactivity
• high concentration of low density lipoproteins in the blood
• diet high in salt
• diet high in saturated fats - increases conc of LDLs
• lack of vitamins
• type 2 diabetes
• stress
• family history of cardiovascular endurance
What are risk factors of cardiovascular disease?
• age - risk increases with age
• gender - men under 50 at higher risk than women of same age
• cigarette smoking - both carbon monoxide and nicotine found in cigarette smoke increases the risk of
• hypertension (high blood pressure) - increases risk of damage to artery linings
• obesity
• physical inactivity
• high concentration of low density lipoproteins in the blood
• diet high in salt
• diet high in saturated fats - increases conc of LDLs
• lack of vitamins
• type 2 diabetes
• stress
• family history of cardiovascular endurance
How do you calculate cardiac output?
Cardiac output = heart rate (bpm) x stroke volume (cm^3)
You may have to this from either tables of data or from graphs
How do you determine heart rate from a date table that looks like this:
1) Number of cycles / time it took to complete those cycles
2) covert to correct unit
To determine the length of one cycle, look for how long it takes for the numbers to repeat
How do you find the stroke volume from a data table?
Find the maximum and the minimum volume of blood in the ventricle and find the difference.
Eg maximum = 120cm ^3
minimum = 50cm^3
Stroke volume = 120-50 = 70
How do you find heart rate from a graph?
Number of cycles / time it takes
To identify a complete cycle we can pick any point on the graph and see how long it takes for the plot on the graph to return to the same position
Eg in graph we can see one heartbeat is 0.5 seconds
How do you interpret data on risk factors and cardiovascular diseases?
