Cardiovascular Disease

• Cardiovascular disease

  A term used to describe diseases of the heart or blood vessels, for example coronary heart disease
• Coronary heart disease


  • Coronary arteries that supply the blood to the muscle of the heart get blocked by layers of fatty material building up
  • Arteries become narrow, so blood flow is restricted and there's a lack of oxygen to the heart muscle
  • Can result in a heart attack
• How stents work


  1. Stents are tubes inserted inside arteries

  2. They keep arteries open

  3. Ensure blood can pass through to the heart muscles
• Normal artery


  • Deposit of fat build up
  • Space in centre of artery shrinks, so it's harder for blood to pass through
• Artery with stent


  • Stent pushes artery wall out
  • Squashing fatty deposits
  • More space in the centre of the artery
• Stents


  • Effective for a long time
  • Recovery time from surgery is relatively quick
• Risks of stents


  • Complications during operation (e.g. heart attack)
  • Risk of infection from surgery
  • Risk of developing blood clot near the stent (thrombosis)
• Cholesterol

  • An essential lipid that the body produces and needs to function properly
  • Too much 'bad' (LDL) cholesterol can cause health problems
• How 'bad' cholesterol causes problems

  • Fatty deposits form inside arteries
  • Can lead to coronary heart disease
• Statins


  • Drugs that can reduce the amount of 'bad' cholesterol present in the bloodstream
  • Slow down the rate of fatty deposits forming
• Advantages of statins

  • Reduce risk of strokes, coronary heart disease and heart attacks
  • Increase amount of 'good' (HDL) cholesterol in bloodstream
  • May help prevent some other diseases
• Disadvantages of statins


  • Long-term drug that must be taken regularly
  • Risk of forgetting to take them
  • Can cause negative side effects (e.g. headaches, kidney failure, liver damage, memory loss)
  • Effect isn't instant, takes time to kick in
• Artificial hearts


  • Mechanical devices that pump blood for a person whose own heart has failed
  • Usually only used as a temporary fix, to keep a person alive until a donor heart can be found or to help a person recover by allowing the heart to rest and heal
  • In some cases used as a permanent fix, which reduces the need for a donor heart
• Advantage of artificial hearts

  They're less likely to be rejected by the body's immune system than a donor heart
• Surgery to fit an artificial heart

  Can lead to bleeding and infection
• Artificial hearts


  Don't work as well as healthy natural ones - parts of the heart could wear out or the electrical motor could fail, blood doesn't flow through as smoothly, which can cause blood clots and lead to strokes
• Faulty heart valves


  Can be damaged or weakened by heart attacks, infection or old age, causing the valve tissue to stiffen so it won't open properly or become leaky, allowing blood to flow in both directions rather than just forward
• Replacement heart valves


  • Can be biological (taken from humans or other mammals) or mechanical (man-made)
• Replacing a valve is a much less drastic procedure than a whole heart transplant, but fitting artificial valves is still major surgery and there can still be problems with blood clots
• Artificial blood


  A blood substitute, e.g. a salt solution ("saline"), which is used to replace the lost volume of blood to keep someone alive if they lose a lot of blood, e.g. in an accident
• Artificial blood is safe (if no air bubbles get into the blood) and can keep people alive even if they lose 2/3 of their red blood cells, giving the patient enough time to produce new blood cells
• Ideally, an artificial blood product would replace the function of the lost red blood cells, so that there's no need for a blood transfusion