Cardiovascular Disease Flashcards
Cardiovascular disease incorporates other diseases/ illnesses/ ailments
What are they?
- Hypertension
- Ischemic heart disease
- Angina pictorial myocardial infarction
- Stroke
- Rheumatic heart disease
- Congenital cardiac defects
- Heart failure.
Most Of the disease grouped under the heading CVD are interrelated
Cardiovascular 🫀 disease (CVD) is the primary cause of heart failure.
However there are a variety of other factors that can also cause heart failure.
What are these?
- Heart valve defects caused by, disease such as rheumatic fever or infection
- Primary disease of the heart muscle AKA cardiomyopathy
- Congenital heart disease.
What causes Cardiovascular 🫀 Disease(CVD)
- Mostly caused by atheromatous this is a build up of plaque on the intima or the inner layer if the arterial wall
- Hypertension and strokes are often manifestations of the same process in arteries of the body and the brain.
How can the numbers of people suffering with cardiovascular 🫀 disease decline?
- Can be accomplished through modifications of the major risks know to be associated with atherosclerosis (the build up of fat)
- EG through diet and exercise.
What are the risk factors for Cardiovascular 🫀 disease?
- Age
- Sex - Males are at a higher risk.
- Family history of CVD
- Ethnic background
- Smoking
- Raised BP
- Raised cholesterol
- Low income/ social deprivation (north/ south divide)
- Air pollution.
What is total cholesterol?
This is the overall amount of cholesterol in the blood including both good and bad cholesterol
What is Good cholesterol (HDL)?
This makes you less likely to have heart problems or a stroke
What is bad cholesterol (LDL or non- HDL)?
This contributes to atherosclerosis and makes you more likely to have heart problems or a stroke
What are triglycerides?
These are fatty substances similar to bad cholesterol and are considered as the steps before developing cholesterol
What is the genetic link to cardiovascular 🫀 disease (CVD)?
- Genetics can influence the risk for heart disease a family history of CVD modifies the future risk of CVD depending on the number and age of affected 1st degree relatives
- Many cardiac problems are inherited including arrhythmia’s, congenital heart disease, cardiomyopathy and high cholesterol.
- CVD leading to heart attack stroke and heart failure can run in families
- Variants in chromosomes 6, 9, and 12 are associated with heart disease
Cardiovascular 🫀 disease in relation to fetal development ?
- Studies suggest that impaired fetal growth is related to the higher risk of hypertension, diabetes and CVD
- Neonatal abdominal circumference has also shown to predict plasma cholesterol and fibrinogen levels in men later in life CVD is also linked to this
Size of babies in relation to cardiovascular 🫀 disease?
- Babies born small in relation to size of their placenta have an increased risk of developing hypertension.
- Babies who are large compared to their placenta are at a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes sometimes in combination with hypertension
- Babies born small tent to have higher basal plasma cortisol levels
- Reduced birthweight has been linked to chronic lung disease.
- Large birthweight had been linked with increased risk of polycystic ovarian disease and hormone related concerns such as breast, prostate and testicular cancer.
Associations with small birth size?
- Hypertension
- Coronary heart disease
- Non insulin dependent diabetes
- Stroke
- Dislipidaemia
- Elevated clotting factors
- ## Impaired neuro development
Associations with larger birth size?
- Polycystic ovarian cancer
- Breast cancer
- Prostate cancer
- Testicular cancer
- Childhood leukaemia
What is the Barkers Hypothesis?
- States that adverse influences early in development and particularly during intrauterine life can result in per infant changes in the physiology and metabolism resulting in increased disease in adulthood
- The fetal origins hypothesis states that fetal under- nutrition in the middle to late gestation leads to disproportionate fetal growth programmes later coronary heart disease
- Like other living creatures in early life human beings are ‘plastic’ and able to adapt to their environments
- the development of sweat glands are an example of this.
- the growth of babies has to constrained by the size of the mother otherwise normal birth could not occur
- In pregnancies after ovum donation women have smaller babies even if the woman donating them was large.