Cardiovascular System Lab Report

How may a simple checkup be a significance to one’s life might you ask? For starters, the cardiovascular system is a complex network consisting of the heart organ, vessels, arteries, veins, etc, in which the blood travels through. Because the cardiovascular system plays a major role in keeping the human body alive by transporting necessary nutrients, removing waste, and most importantly, circulating oxygenated blood throughout the body, the importance of maintaining such system is undeniable. There are various ways to assess the heart, however, for all different reasons. These reasons include just regular checkups, further testing, and examination, and/or for diseases of the heart. Cardiac assessments are tests performed on the patient to

Assessing the heart through a physical examination or using medical technology to detect the heart’s current state of health has never been this easy since the history of trial and error of figuring out this complex organ. Depending on the condition of the individual, examining the heart can vary from a simple session of questions, regarding the person’s lifestyle and activities, to using medical equipment to the heart’s sounds for any murmurs, pulse rate, blood pressure, and etc. A few of the possibly many more other ways the doctor is able to assess the patient is by physically touching and pressing on certain areas of the body in order to feel for any abnormalities, taking the individual’s blood pressure using what is called a sphygmomanometer, taking one’s pulse rate in any one of the vital signs, and listening to the heart using a stethoscope. These assessments help with further diagnosing any sort of issue relating to the heart in order to begin the treatment process. For example, taking one’s blood pressure shows whether the individual has a low, normal, or high blood pressure (hypotension for severely low bp, hypertension for severely high). Another example is the physical assessment for Coronary Artery Disease. Coronary Artery Disease is categorized by two types: atherosclerosis, meaning the buildup of plaque, fats, or cholesterol, and

Taking in consideration that it depends on the overall condition of the individual, further assessment/tests might take place. Using the example of Coronary Artery Disease again, further assessing maybe a blood test to detect any increase levels of cholesterol and blood sugar that causes atherosclerosis, the use of a special ultrasound device called the Doppler ultrasound to measure blood pressure at various points along the arms and legs, and/or the ankle-brachial index test to look for atherosclerosis in the arteries of the legs and feet (“Diagnosis…”). For the treatment process, the first procedure option is percutaneous coronary revascularization, in which a once deflated balloon is inflated to open the artery, and the second option is coronary artery bypass surgery where a graft is created to bypass blocked coronary arteries using a vessel from another part of your body (“Treatment…”). The initial point is to restore blood circulation by reopening the blocked artery. Another but rather rare disease example is called Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA). Because this disease isn’t diagnosed through regular assessment, it requires imaging type of tests in order to examine an aneurysm. The type of imaging tests used is ultrasonography, plain radiography, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging, and angiography (“Abdominal…”). These images tests help determine the severity of an