Nearly half of all American adults have high blood pressure and yet many do not have it under control. High blood pressure is virtually asymptomatic; one can go for years without any signs. Therefore, it is extremely important to get checked with a simple blood pressure test. If left uncontrolled for too long, other pathologies can develop.
Self-Assessment Questions:
Click here to test your understanding of Hypertensive Heart Disease.
Discussion Questions:
- One complication of hypertensive heart disease (HHD) is ischemic heart disease. Do you think this is primarily caused by left ventricular hypertrophy, or by coronary heart disease? Why?
- Using your knowledge of heart anatomy, describe which of the four heart chambers will be enlarged for a patient with (1) chronic pulmonary edema, and (2) chronic edema in the extremities.
- There is a growing interest in portable health monitor devices. One example is wearable devices for remote blood pressure monitoring, which is mentioned in Kario’s review article. List 5 design requirements for a device like this one, and explain why you chose these requirements.
- You are treating a patient with high levels of plaque buildup in their arteries, and their echocardiogram shows a normally sized heart. What solutions could you recommend to prevent the development of left ventricular hypertrophy? Do you think these preventative measures are better or worse than treatment to get rid of the existing plaque? Why or why not?
- Refer to book chapter by Desai et al. Vascular grafts are commonly used to replace larger vessels in the body, but synthetic grafts for smaller vessels have not met as much success. Consider a vascular graft for a diseased coronary artery that is causing hypertensive heart disease. What design requirements would you consider when designing this graft? Why?
Continue Reading:
- K. Kario, “Management of Hypertension in the Digital Era,” Hypertension, vol. 76, no. 3, pp. 640–650, Sep. 2020, doi: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.120.14742. Click here to read.
- This review article explores the current status of wearable blood pressure monitoring devices, as well as potential for expansion (e.g. artificial intelligence).
- M. Desai and G. Hamilton, “Graft Materials Past and Future,” in Mechanisms of Vascular Disease: A Reference Book for Vascular Specialists, R. Fitridge and M. Thompson, Eds. Adelaide (AU): University of Adelaide Press, 2011. Accessed: Nov. 01, 2021. [Online]. Available: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534281/.
- This is a chapter in a vascular physiology reference book that overviews the pathophysiology of graft healing and the different biomaterial properties of graft prosthetics.
About the Creator:
This video was created by a student in the Rice Bioengineering Class of 2023 (used with permission).
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