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The Naked Heart is a weekly series of blogs and social media publications from English cardiologist Dr Edward Leatham. His brief is to apply 50 years of ”breathing and practicing” cardiology to make his day to day job more about educating patients than simply just diagnosing and treating them. ”The only way modern medicine can cope with the ever increasing demand is by educating our patients on basic principles and then encourage every patient to become their own physician, guided by their doctors” These podcast publications are AI constructs created to broaden the audience in an attempt to explain quite complicated, yet important facts thus sharing advances in medical knowledge with more people, ideally even before they become our patients. Each podcast is designed to broadcast alongside a weekly blog article with multiple reels and posts on social media, all accessible for free and without any product advertising via https://www.scvc.co.uk/category/naked-heart/
Episodes
Monday Oct 28, 2024
Monday Oct 28, 2024
In atrial fibrillation, the atrial tissue quivers at approximately 600 cycles per minute, which means that it has no useful pumping function. The left atrium in patients with atrial fibrillation, merely acts as a passive conduit between the lungs and the left ventricle. It no longer serves to prime the left ventricle, and as a result, there may be less blood entering the heart during diastole and thus less 'priming' occurs, so cardiac output may fall. If ever you have experienced a car's turbo charger going 'on the blink' you will know that the car still GOES, but not very well, since it too suffers loss of output. The left atrial pressure in many such cases will increase, causing oedema or fluid in the alveolar space, reducing gas exchange and contributing to the symptom of breathlessness.
Any stiffening of the left ventricle that for example accompanies old age, poor glycaemic control or indeed any condition that causes thickening of the left ventricle, such as hypertension or cardiomyopathy, therefore has a big impact on the ability of the left ventricle to relax and suck blood through from the left atrium and joining pulmonary veins, creating backup of blood into the lung tissue.
For more on this topic and other related blog articles and podcasts see
https://www.scvc.co.uk/naked-heart/why-do-patients-in-atrial-fibrillation-get-breathless/
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