#cardiologic

[reasonsforhope]

"A study looking at the bearers of artificial hearts found that a subset of them can regenerate heart muscle tissue—the first time such an observation has ever been made.

It may open the door to new ways to treat and perhaps someday cure heart failure, the deadliest non-communicable disease on Earth. The results were published in the journal Circulation.

A team of physician-scientists at the University of Arizona’s Heart Center in Tucson led a collaboration of international experts to investigate whether heart muscles can regenerate.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart failure affects nearly 7 million US adults and is responsible for 14% of deaths per year. There is no cure for heart failure, though medications can slow its progression. The only treatment for advanced heart failure, other than a transplant, is a pump replacement through an artificial heart, called a left ventricular assist device, which can help the heart pump blood.

“Skeletal muscle has a significant ability to regenerate after injury. If you’re playing soccer and you tear a muscle, you need to rest it, and it heals,” said Hesham Sadek, director of the University’s Sarver Heart Center.

It was previously thought that when a heart muscle is injured, it could never grow back.

“Irrefutable evidence of heart muscle regeneration has never been shown before in humans,” he said. “This study provided direct evidence.”

The project began with tissue from artificial heart patients provided by colleagues at the University of Utah Health and School of Medicine led by Stavros Drakos, MD, PhD, and a pioneer in left ventricular assist device-mediated recovery.

Teams in Sweden and Germany used their innovative method of carbon dating human heart tissue to track whether these samples contained newly generated cells. The investigators found that patients with artificial hearts regenerated muscle cells at more than six times the rate of healthy hearts.

“This is the strongest evidence we have, so far, that human heart muscle cells can actually regenerate, which really is exciting, because it solidifies the notion that there is an intrinsic capacity of the human heart to regenerate,” Sadek said.

“It also strongly supports the hypothesis that the inability of the heart muscle to ‘rest’ is a major driver of the heart’s lost ability to regenerate shortly after birth. It may be possible to target the molecular pathways involved in cell division to enhance the heart’s ability to regenerate.”

In 2011, Sadek published a paper in Science showing that while heart muscle cells actively divide in utero, they stop dividing shortly after birth to devote their energy to pumping blood through the body nonstop, with no time for breaks.

In 2014, he published evidence of cell division in patients with artificial hearts, hinting that their heart muscle cells might have been regenerating because they were able to rest.

These findings, combined with other research teams’ observations that some artificial heart patients could have their devices removed after experiencing a reversal of symptoms, led him to wonder if the artificial heart provides cardiac muscles the equivalent of bed rest like a person needs when recovering from injury.

“The pump pushes blood into the aorta, bypassing the heart,” he said. “The heart is essentially resting.”

Sadek’s previous studies indicated that this rest might be beneficial for the heart muscle cells, but he needed to design an experiment to determine whether patients with artificial hearts were actually regenerating muscles.

Next, Sadek wants to figure out why only about 25% of patients are “responders” to artificial hearts, meaning that their cardiac muscle regenerates.

“It’s not clear why some patients respond and some don’t, but it’s very clear that the ones who respond have the ability to regenerate heart muscle,” he said. “The exciting part now is to determine how we can make everyone a responder, because if you can, you can essentially cure heart failure.

“The beauty of this is that a mechanical heart is not a therapy we hope to deliver to our patients in the future—these devices are tried and true, and we’ve been using them for years.”"

-via Good News Network, December 31, 2024

[symbiosisonlinepublishing]

Symbiosis Online Publishing invites practicing experts, researchers, and students to submit original articles on clinical trials in cardiology. Now, read about the casual argument between treatment and the control of the disease.

Visit: https://symbiosisonlinepublishing.com/cardiology/

[athemisheartbeat]

Are you able to differentiate both beats?🩺❤️

New videos with my friend @tiaraheart available!

[chloespump]

Would this be considered a heave?

[gunsandspaceships]

Tony's Heart: Arrhythmia

For at least 6 years (from 2008 to 2014) Tony suffered from arrhythmia and had a pacemaker and ICD (implantable cardioverter-defibrillator) in his chest along with arc reactor. How do we know this:

IM1 0:25:55 - There's no need to "run a heart" if there's only shrapnel in the chest. Yinsen's words only make sense if there is something running the heart that requires electricity from the reactor - a pacemaker and ICD.

IM1 0:51:10 - In the scene where Pepper changes his reactor and takes out the old magnet, we hear Tony's heart went into tachycardia and he was about to get a cardiac arrest (caused by arrhythmias). After connecting the new reactor, Tony received an electric shock and his heart rate returned to normal. What happened: It wasn't the shrapnel that caused this reaction - even without magnet, the shrapnel would have been too slow to cause immediate danger. A pacemaker-ICD is a power source, chip, and electrodes that go to a heart. In this case, the power source is the reactor itself, the chip is part of the reactor, and the electrodes run from the base of the socket to Tony's heart. When Tony connected the reactor cable to the base plate, he connected it to the electrodes so that his pacemaker could work and save him from his irregular heartbeats. Apparently connecting the reactor to the base plate was necessary to power his pacemaker and nothing else, since the old magnet had been pulled out by Pepper and the new reactor had its own magnet. Without reactor-pacemaker-ICD, he had no protection against arrhythmia. So when Pepper touched the socket walls, it gave Tony a shock and disrupted his hearth rhythm (similar happened to him in Endgame), then she pulled out the magnet and that stressed him enough to give him tachycardia, and as soon as the reactor was reconnected, the pacemaker-ICD worked again and corrected Tony's heart rhythm by sending him a therapeutic electric shock.

IM1 1:37:00 - Stane pulled out the reactor with pacemaker out of Tony's chest. Without the pacemaker, due to temporary paralysis and stress Tony's heart went to bradycardia (abnormally slow heartbeat), which gives us the diagnosis - Sick Sinus Syndrome (tachycardia-bradycardia syndrome). Tony managed to get to his lab and connect the old reactor. Shrapnel and electromagnet had nothing to do with it, because, as I already mentioned, shrapnel is too slow to cause damage in such a short time, and we also have to remember that the old magnet was outside the reactor and was pulled out by Pepper. So there was no magnet in this reactor. From that moment until the end of the battle with Stane, the shrapnel in Tony's chest was free. Tony needed this reactor first to correct the arrhythmia, and then to power the armor, and not to stop the shrapnel. He plugged it in, received a treatment shock that eliminated the bradycardia, and may have lost consciousness, which is why he was lying on the floor when Rhodes found him.

IM3 Deleted scene "Tony, Harley and EJ" - Tony saves EJ using his reactor's ICD function. He had to take it out of his chest and give the boy shocks, receiving them himself, which disrupted his heart rhythm. This sent Tony into ventricular fibrillation, and Harley had to reconnect the reactor so the ICD could deliver the treatment shock you see in the second gif.

Avengers: Endgame (1:20:30) - Tony asked Scott to induce a mild cardiac dysrhythmia (another name for arrhythmia) in his 2012 copy by pulling out a pin inside the reactor. This appeared to disrupt the normal functioning of his pacemaker and caused him to have a series of abnormal shocks that led to an arrhythmia and him falling to the ground in convulsions. Note that Tony knew what to do and that it (probably) wouldn't kill him, meaning his pacemaker-ICD would eventually solve the problem on its own, even without Thor's help.

And finally:

In case my evidence is not convincing enough.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Cardiology Vocabulary

for your next poem/story

Ablation – Elimination or removal.

Annulus – The ring around a heart valve where the valve leaflet merges with the heart muscle.

Arrhythmia – (or dysrhythmia) An abnormal heartbeat.

Autologous – Relating to self. For example, autologous stem cells are those taken from the patient’s own body.

Bruit – A sound made in the blood vessels resulting from turbulence, perhaps because of a buildup of plaque or damage to the vessels.

Cardiac – Pertaining to the heart.

Cardiomegaly – An enlarged heart. It is usually a sign of an underlying problem, such as high blood pressure, heart valve problems, or cardiomyopathy.

Carotid artery – A major artery (right and left) in the neck supplying blood to the brain.

Claudication – A tiredness or pain in the arms and legs caused by an inadequate supply of oxygen to the muscles, usually due to narrowed arteries or peripheral arterial disease (PAD).

Commissurotomy -A procedure used to widen the opening of a heart valve that has been narrowed by scar tissue.

Digitalis – A medicine made from the leaves of the foxglove plant. Digitalis is used to treat congestive heart failure (CHF) and heart rhythm problems (arrhythmias).

Endocardium – The smooth membrane covering the inside of the heart. The innermost lining of the heart.

Infarct – The area of heart tissue permanently damaged by an inadequate supply of oxygen.

Jugular veins – The veins that carry blood back from the head to the heart.

Maze surgery – A type of heart surgery that is used to treat chronic atrial fibrillation by creating a surgical “maze” of new electrical pathways to let electrical impulses travel easily through the heart. Also called the Maze procedure.

Myocardium – The muscular wall of the heart. It contracts to pump blood out of the heart and then relaxes as the heart refills with returning blood.

Palpitation – An uncomfortable feeling within the chest caused by an irregular heartbeat.

Pericardium – The outer fibrous sac that surrounds the heart.

Regurgitation – Backward flow of blood through a defective heart valve.

Septal defect – A hole in the wall of the heart separating the atria or in the wall of the heart separating the ventricles.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 ⚜ More: Word Lists

[merlinr77-steth]

Cover of a German news magazine special issue covering health topics. The lower left part says "Protect the heart" and "Huge special: Know the risks, utilize the newest therapies and live longer, this you can do yourself"

The blue bottom line reads "Plus: The top clinics for cardiology and heart surgery"

[germanelectrodelead]

My pulse didn't go down after a strong session of chest training.

So I hooked myself up to a 3 lead ecg. I saw my heart rate was way too high for my actual activity, and it didn't go down. So I got my paddles, put some electrode gel on them and gave myself a controlled 20 joule shock. After it my heart was beating in a normal steady rythm.

But if I had actually shocked my self I may be dead so never do this!

Yoo would never shock my self. I can control my heart rate very good so it looks real. Do never do that but keep ur phantasy running.

[3heartmind3]

1 minute after a strenuous climb up a hill. What HR did I reach?

[icarusredwings]

As a grown man, I don't smoke or drink because "I wanna take care of myself" I don't smoke or drink because my chronic illness specialists would be mad at me.

Shane would absolutely loose his mind if I said I started smoking and George would die of heart attack if I said I started heavily drinking.

I can't disappoint them?? They're my care team.

Can you imagine if Timothy was upset with me!??

[im-not-even-sorry]

FYK I'm not a cardiophile but ik some people here would enjoy it so: have fun!

[guysmedical2]

a few breaths of air through the ambu bag then a shock

[batireads]

What do you do on your day off they asked

Nothing she replied as she turned another page

[aro-culture-is]

aro culture is vertigo

[med-tech-enthusiast]

homemade anesthesia machine pt 1

[gunsandspaceships]

"How not to treat your friend". Part 2

When your friend grabs chest (his, not yours) and says his arm is numb - call an ambulance, don't just stand there.