covers the essentials of cardiovascular physiology for medical students, residents, nurses, and allied health professionals. This book is the second in The Integrated Physiology Series, a sequence of monographs that review physiology in a clinically meaningful way. The accessibility and conversational tone of the text offset the difficult and intimidating nature of the subject. Detailed illustrations and accompanying online animated figures help students truly understand key cardiovascular concepts most relevant for the care of patients. Learning objectives, thought questions, clinical cases, and USMLE-style review questions round out the teaching elements that challenge students and help them master the material.

Cardiovascular Physiology: A Clinical Approach

The goal of Cardiovascular Physiology: A Clinical Approach is to provide a clear, clinically oriented exposition of the essentials of cardiovascular physiology for medical students, residents, nurses, and allied health professionals. We present the physiology in the context of a system to emphasize that the functions we associate with the circulation depend on more than the heart. This approach is essential for a complete understanding of the clinical problems that affect the heart and blood vessels and that lead to symptoms of ischemic chest pain, hypotension, and heart failure.

This book is the second in The Integrated Physiology Series, a sequence of monographs on physiology. The first book, Respiratory Physiology: A Clinical Approach, describes the essential principles underlying breathing. Additional books in development at this time will address renal and gastrointestinal function. Each book will be designed to meet the needs of the learners outlined below and will use the same style and pedagogical tools. In addition, we have attempted to design common frameworks upon which the student can hang the large amounts of information confronting us in medicine today and with which a foundation can be built to support the incorporation of new knowledge in the future. In this book, for example, we describe the cardiovascular system in the context of the controller (the regulation of heart rate, contractility, and vascular tone), the pump function (the determinants of stroke volume and cardiac output), and the exchanger (the distribution of blood to the tissue and the exchange of oxygen, carbon dioxide, nutrients, and the products of metabolism). This same framework-controller, pump, and exchanger-is applicable to the respiratory system and used in the first book of the series. Thus, learning concepts important for one organ system will facilitate understanding when you study the other organ system. The series addresses “integrated” physiology by its focus on systems rather than on organs and by making explicit links between systems.

Contents

۱ Getting Started: The Approach to Cardiovascular Physiology۲ Form and Function: The Physiological Implications of the Anatomy of the Cardiovascular System۳ Excitation Contraction (EC] Coupling: Calciumr the EC Powerhouse۴ The Cardiac Cycle: Bringing the Chambers Together۵ Electrical Function: Setting the Rhythm۶ Electrocardiogram: Keeping the Beat۷ Cardiac Output (Starling Curves): Getting It Started۸ Blood Vessels: Special Delivery۹ Control of Blood Pressure: Keeping Us Standing۱۰ Integration Chapter: Pregnancyr Two Hearts Beating as OneAppendix: Answers to Review Questions