Physiology Of Coronary Heart Disease

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Cardiovascular disease is currently the leading cause of death in the United States. It is responsible for one in four deaths every year, about 600,000 mortalities. This disease affects men and women, as well as every ethnic group. Coronary artery disease is the most common cardiovascular disease, representing approximately 400,000 deaths per year of the aforementioned 600,000 total deaths from cardiovascular diseases as a whole. In 2010 alone, coronary artery disease cost the United States $108.9 billion for health care services, medication, and lost productivity. These chilling statistics, published every year by the American Medical Association, demonstrate the immediate need for new and innovative ways to prevent, detect, and treat coronary heart disease. This paper will explore the molecular biology behind the disease while explaining the current treatments and prevention that are available today, why they work and what can be done to improve them.
Coronary heart disease is defined by the hardening of the epicardial coronary arteries. The buildup of plaque in the arteries slowly narrows the coronary artery lumen. In order to better understand the physiology of the disease, it is important to first know the basic anatomy of the human heart. The aorta, located in the superior region of the heart, branches off into two main coronary blood vessels, otherwise known as arteries. The arteries are located on the left and right side of the heart and span its surface. They subsequently branch off into smaller arteries which supply oxygen-rich blood to the entire heart (Texas Heart Institute, 2013). Therefore, the narrowing of these arteries due to plaque buildup significantly impairs blood flow throughout the heart.
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... susceptibility. Patients who subsequently needed further treatment for coronary heart disease displayed significantly different protein expression as opposed to patients who needed no further treatment. This revolutionary study provides a new way of detecting coronary artery disease that is both cost effective and less dangerous for patients.
Cost effectiveness and noninvasiveness seem to be a theme in developing preventative treatments of coronary artery disease. A study presented by the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging proposes that the use of coronary wall MRI would encompass both of these factors. These MRI images compared coronary artery thickness of symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. It was found that these images could successfully detect artery wall thickness in asymptomatic patients who would have otherwise not been screened for risk factors.

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