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Saturday, March 15, 2008

The Heart


Sometimes it is difficult to explain to the patients about what is wrong with their heart. There are many structures in the heart that can be involved in any heart disease.

One of my consultants taught me one extremely useful analogy for the heart. Ask the patient to think the heart as a house. A house which is made of wall, doors, wiring and plumbing. Any of these structures can be affected in heart disease.

Wall of the house represent the muscular wall that surrounds the heart. It can be enlarged, thicken or rupture.

The doors represent the heart valve. It can be floppy, hardened or become invaded with germs. There are 4 main valves in the heart namely aortic, mitral, tricuspid and pulmonary valve. All of these valves can cause different types of murmur (sound that you can hear with a stethoscope).

Plumbing is referring to the blood vessels (coronary arteries) that supply oxygen to the heart muscle. The vessels can be blocked leading to reduction of blood supply to the heart muslces of which can cause heart attack.

Wiring reflects the electrical conduction of the heart. For heart to beat continuously, it depends on an intricate framework of electrical system throughout the whole heart muscles. If any of these wires being cut or short circuit, the heart will become completely haywire.

It is a good analogy of the heart :)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

salam. subhanallah, i like this analogy very much. hehe. rase lebih memahami dengan penggunaan analogi ni. btw, sy medic student jg. name kite pun same. hehe. minta izin nak copy analogi ni boleh? TQ.

Hafiz.

Hafiz said...

you are welcome to do so. Hopefully the analogy will help you :).

notebooks, I couldn't comprehend the language at your blog though.

hayad said...

i can use this analogy to explain bout heart to my students also :)

Anonymous said...

thanks 4 sharing this hafiz ... ;) masa belajar biologi dulu, kite hampir pitam bile cikgu explain psl system jantung... *huhu kes imagine lebih2* :D

Anonymous said...

Hafiz, i do learn medical subjects and find heart is intresting like the other sytems. And I'm having problem when come to interpreting the ECG, specially the pathological one. Do u have any suggestion of any book or websites that can help me for better understanding of ECG, or u have anything to share about ECG interpretation in ur blog, cause seems u have a lot of medical discussion in ur blog, hope u could share sumthing on it...

Hafiz said...

hayad, semoga ia dapat membantu para pelajar sekolah menengah memahami struktur jantung.

Aria, jantung ni agak sukar pada mulanya. Ada banyak struktur yang akan ambil masa untuk memahaminya.

Daff, I will be writing on how to understand ECG at basic level in my next post which will be published in the next few days.

A good book to understand ECG is 'The ECG Made Easy' by John Hampton :)