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Posts Tagged ‘Heart Disease’

Jun
16

What Is Asystole And Why Is It Bad?

Asystole is the medical term that is commonly called flatline. Flatline means that there is no cardiac electrical movement. During flatline, the myocardium does not produce any contractions and provides no blood flow or cardiac output. The myocardium is the center of the 3 layers that form the heart’s wall. Medical physicians require a state of asystole to certify that an individual is dead.

Patients that exhibit signs of asystole are usually treated with chest compressions and injections of atropine, epinephrine or vasopressin. During asystole, electrical shocks (defibrillation), will typically have no affect on the heart since it has already become depolarized. Defibrillation comprises of applying a medicinal amount of electrical shock to a stricken heart through a defibrillator by an ECG technician or another medical professional.

A defibrillator stops the heart from beating by depolarizing a large portion of the heart muscle. Before asystole occurs, the normal heart rhythm can be revived. After applying a defibrillator, the natural pacemaker chemicals in the sinoatrial node within the heart can restart the heartbeat.

There are a few emergency room doctors that believe in using defibrillation even after seeing the signs of asystole. They suggest that defibrillation should be applied because the lack of heartbeat may really be an uneven contraction of the heart muscle inside the chambers of the heart. This type of contraction is also known as ventricular fibrillation and makes the heart muscle quiver like a can full of worms.

While it may be true that ventricular fibrillation may be hard to distinguish from asystole, there is still not a lot of evidence to back up this practice. The majority of doctors believe that asystole is a verification of death and not an uneven heart rate. ECG/EKG training usually defines asystole as a medical confirmation of death. When another cause is detected for the absence of a heartbeat and is treated immediately, a small percentage of patients are brought back to life.

An ECG technician will analyze the patient’s heart rhythm to check for a cardiac arrhythmia and a ventricular fibrillation heart condition. A cardiac arrhythmia happens whenever there is unusual electrical activity within the heart such as being too slow, too fast or extremely irregular.

ECG technicians are required to learn this detailed knowledge through ECG/EKG classes to earn their ECG/EKG certification.

You will find ECG technicians with ECG/EKG certification working in hospital emergency rooms, high-risk industrial facilities, nursing homes, cardiologist offices or working one-on-one with patients. Their ECG/EKG training includes working under supervision at a medical facility and taking ECG/EKG classes in:

  • Patient preparation
  • ECG device operation
  • Electrical lead positioning
  • Analyzing ECG tracings
  • There is a growing demand for medical professionals that can work with asystole conditions, defibrillators and ECG/EKG devices because of the large population of baby boomers that are now in their 60s.

    Mar
    06

    A major portion that the current world population is suffering from is heart disease and cholesterol. Rising and falling cholesterol has been a major issue that the grabs the attention of today’s medical practitioners. The problems is not only stuck to the old age but has been significantly noticed among the adults as well. Diet is one of the major causes for the rising Cholesterol level. This usually happens due to heavy consumption of fatty acids. The major cause of cholesterol is uncontrolled balance between HDL (high-density lipoproteins) and LDL (low-density lipoprotein).

    Basically a human body needs to keep HDL level high and reasonably low level of LDL. For controlling Cholesterol, there are two ways- natural cholesterol control and prescription cholesterol control. If later one is the option for you then need to consult a physician who would analyze your cholesterol level and would prescribe you medicine that would control your Cholesterol level. But as it is said “Prevention Is Better Than Cure“, you have to control your eating habits if you want to see good results. Reduce the consumption of saturated fatty acids as they result in to the rise the Cholesterol level in the blood. There are some natural ways as well that could help you reduce LDL level in your body.

    Exercise – exercise is a useful outcome to control the increasing Cholesterol level. Workouts burn the fats lying in the body tissues and helps in controlling the Cholesterol level in the body.

    Soluble fibers – consume food that contains soluble fibers like oats and oatcakes. These attach themselves to the fats and bring them out of the body.

    Omega-3 – this is seen as a useful source that can control the Cholesterol in our body. Omega-3 is generally attained from the oily fish and is available in the cooking oils. It is always advised to consume much of Omega-3 in your diet.

    Trans fats – refrain from the consumption of Trans fats as much as possible. These are found in abundance with the fast foods, chips, soft drinks, candy bars and refined sugar and other such items. The simplest way to reduce Trans fat consumption is avoid eating them.

    Sedatives – stay away from sedatives like alcohol, cigarettes and other such things. These are known to raise the level of LDL besides these also cause other health problems.

    Cholesterol results into heart stokes that has many times become the cause of immediate death. So you would like that to happen to you. Its better you Control your Cholesterol level and lead a healthy life style. All it takes is the give up of a few things that disturb your Cholesterol level. Apart from these, there are several other ways that could help you control your cholesterol level.

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