All About Cardiovascular System and Disorders

Usual cause of thickening of the walls of the heart is an increase in the load which produces a compensatory increase in thickness to overcome added load.

Evaluation of prosthetic valves is one of the difficult tasks in echocardiography because of the dense shadows caused by prosthetic valves.

The sinus node is the normal pacemaker of heart which gives out regular electrical signals for the functioning of the heart in response to body's needs.

Defibrillator is a device used to shock the heart back into action when it has stopped due to a life threatening rhythm disorder (ventricular fibrillation).

The heart rate increases in inspiration and decreases in expiration. These respiratory changes in heart rate is known as respiratory sinus arrhythmia.

AV valves are the atrioventricular valves which prevent the back flow of blood from the ventricles (lower chambers of the heart) when they contract.

Regional wall motion abnormality (RWMA) on an echocardiogram Regional wall motion abnormality on an echocardiogram means that a region of the heart muscle is not contracting as it normally

HUTT is short form for head up tilt test. A tilt table and ECG monitoring equipment are necessary for conducting the test.

AIVR is short for accelerated idioventricular rhythm. When the normal pacemaker of the heart (sinus node) slows down, subsidiary pacemakers can take over.

Cardiac CT scan image at the level of the bifurcation of the main pulmonary artery (MPA) into right pulmonary artery (RPA) and left pulmonary artery (LPA).