Cardiovascular pathology: atherosclerosis, ischemic heart disease, rheumatic heart disease
Pathology · MBBS
Beating heart
Interactive 3DA stylized heart pulsing at the rate you set, with its key chambers labelled.
Controls
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bpm
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Study notes
A 30-year-old woman is breathless climbing stairs; murmur is mid-diastolic. This is rheumatic mitral stenosis — childhood strep throat triggered rheumatic fever (molecular mimicry attacking the valve), and decades of fibrosis narrowed the mitral orifice to a fish-mouth. Left atrial pressure rises → pulmonary congestion (breathlessness), atrial fibrillation risk, clots. Balloon valvotomy or valve replacement treats; penicillin prophylaxis would have prevented — the disease of poverty's strep throat, cured by antibiotics never given.
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