Articles
Date: July 9, 2004
Getting Heart Smart: A Century of Progress
Doctors have known since the nineteenth century that blockage of the coronary arteries cause heart attacks, and that cholesterol laden material infiltrates the blood vessels of victims, but they knew of no way to prevent the disease and had little to offer patients who suffered from it. Why coronary artery disease struck some individuals and not others was an enigma. More...
A Primer On Coronary Artery DiseaseAnatomy of the Heart
To understand how narrowed or blocked arteries affect the heart, you need to know how your heart works and how its structure is suited to its function.
The heart's main pumping chamber is the left ventricle. It does most of the work, consumes about 90 percent of the energy and is the part most affected by coronary artery blockage. There are three other chambers of the heart - another ventricle and two atria-but for the sake of understanding coronary artery disease, you can regard these parts as comparatively passive conduits through which blood passes before reaching the left ventricle. They are only indirectly affected by coronary artery disease.
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