Читать книгу Understanding Anatomy and Physiology in Nursing - John Knight - Страница 80

George was unloading shopping from his car when he suddenly felt a crushing heavy pain in the central part of his chest which spread down the inside of his left arm. By the time he sat down, he was feeling breathless with cold, clammy skin and experiencing a feeling of absolute terror. After ringing for an ambulance George’s wife was told to give him an aspirin to chew on and he was rapidly transferred to the local A&E department where, based on ECG evidence, he was immediately diagnosed with a major myocardial infarction (MI). George quickly had stents fitted in to open up his occluded blood vessels and felt almost immediate relief of his pain.

Cardiovascular disease such as that which led to George’s heart attack is a major cause of death and disability throughout the world. Nurses will spend a great deal of their time caring for patients with a variety of both heart and blood vessel disease. Many of the routine physiological measurements carried out by nurses such as recording heart rate, blood pressure and blood oxygen saturation provide snapshots of the patient’s current cardiovascular status.

This chapter will begin by describing the major functions of the cardiovascular system before examining the structure of the heart and its associated structures. Once you have an understanding of the anatomy of the heart, we will explore how the heart functions as a mechanical pump and examine the control mechanisms that ensure its optimal function. The second section of the chapter will examine the structure of blood vessels and explain how the cardiovascular system maintains cardiac output to ensure that blood pressure and tissue perfusion are adequately maintained. To reinforce the key points, we will explore the nature of some of the cardiovascular diseases that nurses routinely encounter in clinical practice.