British Heart Foundation

Although these drugs may help maintain a normal heart rhythm, they can cause side effects, including: nausea, dizziness, and fatigue. Rarely, they may cause ventricular arrhythmias – life-threatening rhythm disturbances originating in the heart’s lower chamber. These medications may be needed indefinitely. Even with medications, there is a chance of another episode of atrial fibrillation. The patient may be prescribed medications to control the heart rate and…

This patient is a 70-year-old male who required inpatient hospitalization due to concerns for acute exacerbation of congestive heart failure. He was presented to the emergency department due to the complaints of pain in the sub sternal/epigastric region accompanied by productive cough which worsen by movements. The pain was described as mild to moderate, constant and dull. His past medical history was suggestive of cardiomyopathy and hypertension. It was noted that he underwent cardiac…

Do Organ Donations Save Lives or Destroy Them? There are different arguments as to why or why not a person should be an organ donor. The first argument that is considered is if doctors should have a say if the person should donate their organs or not. Another argument amongst organ donors is that if the relatives of the patient should be the one to decide if that person should donate if that person is unable to give consent to do so. The patient’s religious views are also a reason why someone…

The heart is comprised of four chambers, the right atrium, right ventricle, left atrium and the left ventricle. The right atrium is the chamber which receives blood from the body that has been depleted from its oxygen and pumps it to the right ventricle. The right ventricle then pumps the blood from the right atrium over to the pulmonary artery which as the name would suggest means it goes to the lungs and the oxygen depleted blood is once again oxygenated. The left atrium of the heart then…

Clinical organ transplantation is one of the most riveting medical advances as it offers a way of giving life to patients with terminal failure of certain body organs. Organ transplantation is a surgical operation where a damaged or failing organ in the body of a human being is removed and replaced with another one from a donor. It calls for the participation of human beings in the donation of organs from deceased of living people. The incidences of vital organ failure cannot match the…

and a constantly changing list of prescriptions. It took months of doctor visits and a wide range of diagnoses to finally be correctly diagnosed with P.O.T.S. The condition falls under the umbrella of dysautonomia and is characterized by a rise in heart rate exceeding thirty beats per minute when transferring from a sitting to standing position. The body’s difficulties in regulating the Autonomic Nervous System leads to patients like me suffering from fatigue, low blood pressure, nausea,…

Have you ever wondered if a human could function without a heart? A heart is one of the most important organs in a human body. It provides the body with oxygen, nutrients, blood, and most importantly, it is what allows us to live. But, what if there was a way that we could create hearts using technology? Technology is a developing factor that has drastically influenced today's society in several ways. Although a heart and technology are two very separate things, they can come together through a…

I was sound asleep in my bed when I heard something break downstairs. I pounced out of bed and grabbed a ChapStick as my weapon. I’m not quite sure what I thought a ChapStick was going to do to a robber but whatever. I was sprinting down the stairs, but I tripped over Crinkles the cat and went tumbling head over heels to the bottom. The ChapStick flew out of my hand when I went airborne and hit me straight in the nose while I was laying there. I got up quickly, pretending that falling down the…

Stage training is an organized and systematic method of cardiorespiratory training that gives athletes and clients defined parameters for exercise intensity. These parameters will illicit specific physiological adaptations while decreasing the risk of overtraining and injury (Clark, Sutton, & Lucett, 2014). It is important to properly understand what each training zone is designed to do and how they should be implemented to maximize their effects. Hans Selye’s theory of general adaptation…

TITLE: Electromyography (EMG) Lab: Understanding Motor Unit Recruitment INTRODUCTION: The objective of this lab is to better understand muscle contraction and the effect it has on motor unit recruitment. This lab was done in three sections, or phases, to help understand the process of muscle contraction. Phase 1 consisted of the usage of the electromyogram to measure varied levels of force that was generated by the muscle, the frequency, and the number of motor units recruited at different…