Chapter 5: Importance of Blood Pressure Flashcards
What is the Blood Pressure?
Pressure or force that blood exerts against the walls of the arteries.
Why the organs of the cardiovascular system (blood, heart, and blood vessels) work together?
To maintain ab adequate flow of blood to the body’s tissues.
Why adequate blood flow requires enough pressure?
To push the blood through smaller and smaller arteries along the capillaries and back to the heart through the venous system.
What does the higher blood flow and pressure mean?
The higher the cardiac output.
What does the lower blood flow and pressure mean?
The lower the cardiac output.
What is Cardiac Output?
The amount of blood the heart pumps in one minute.
Cardiac output values affect various disease processes such as?
Heart failure and coronary artery disease.
Normal blood pressure is crucial for?
Maintaining circulatory health and the exchange of gases in the blood.
Prolonged high blood pressure can lead to?
Heart, brain and kidney failure.
What is the main risk of low blood pressure?
Blood vessels cannot deliver oxygen adequately to the body’s organs.
Recording blood pressures in the patient’s medical record makes it easier to?
Identify an upward or a downward trend and take steps to prevent any possible health complications.
