Heart and Emergency Medicine

Emergency medical services provides some certain of all immediate services like transport, ambulance services, medical care and many more to those patients who need urgent medical attention and treatment. Ambulance is known as the primary vehicles for delivering EMS, in some place’s cars, motorcycle and boats are also used.

Cardiac emergencies is a chronic condition that can trigger symptoms such as shortness of breath, fluid retention, rapid or irregular heartbeats, and more are life-threatening disorders, they should be recognized and treated immediately to minimize the risk of morbidity and mortality.

In the present era Emergency medicine is the most prime focus of research in medicinal research.it is one of medical specialty treatment for the patients with injuries or illnesses which requires immediate medical attention in the acute phase. Generally, Urgent care is served by nurses, physician assistants, and medical assistants.

A pediatric emergency deals with the children and teens that are acutely ill or injured. A pediatric emergency physician is trained to take care of the problems that require immediate medical help. These problems are often serious and may be life-threatening for children and teens.

Emergency nursing is a specialty within the field of professional nursing focusing on the care of patients who require prompt medical attention to avoid long-term disability or death. In addition to addressing "true emergencies," emergency nurses increasingly care for people who are unwilling or unable to get primary medical care elsewhere and come to emergency departments for help. In fact, only a small percentage of emergency department (ED) patients have emergency conditions such as a stroke, heart attack or major trauma. Emergency nurses also tend to patients with acute alcohol and/or drug intoxication, psychiatric and behavioral problems and those who have been raped.

Cardiology is a branch of medicine that deals with the disorders of the heart as well as some parts of the circulatory system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular heart disease and electrophysiology. Physicians who specialize in this field of medicine are called cardiologists, a specialty of internal medicine. Pediatric cardiologists are pediatricians who specialize in cardiology. Physicians who specialize in cardiac surgery are called cardiothoracic surgeons or cardiac surgeons, a specialty of general surgery.

Although the cardiovascular system is inextricably linked to blood, cardiology is relatively unconcerned with hematology and its diseases. Some obvious exceptions that affect the function of the heart would be blood tests (electrolyte disturbances, troponins), decreased oxygen carrying capacity (anemia, hypovolemic shock), and coagulopathies.

Cardiovascular surgery treats diseases and conditions of the heart and the blood vessels of the entire body. Common cardiovascular procedures include coronary bypass surgery, aortic or mitral valve replacement or repair, and aneurysm repair. Cardiovascular surgery methods have advanced substantially since 1896, when Dr. Ludwig Rein of Germany performed the first successful cardiac surgery by ligation of a stab wound to the heart accessed through a thoracotomy. Since the 1990s, open heart surgery has been performed using cardiopulmonary bypass that provides oxygen to the body while the heart is steadied and emptied of its blood, allowing for more complicated and protracted surgeries to be performed.

To measure your blood pressure, your doctor or a specialist will usually place an inflatable arm cuff around your arm and measure your blood pressure using a pressure-measuring gauge.

A blood pressure reading, given in millimeters of mercury (mm Hg), has two numbers. The first, or upper, number measures the pressure in your arteries when your heart beats (systolic pressure). The second, or lower, number measures the pressure in your arteries between beats (diastolic pressure).

Electrocardiography is the process of producing an electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG). It is a graph of voltage versus time of the electrical activity of the heart using electrodes placed on the skin. These electrodes detect the small electrical changes that are a consequence of cardiac muscle depolarization followed by repolarization during each cardiac cycle (heartbeat). Changes in the normal ECG pattern occur in numerous cardiac abnormalities, including cardiac rhythm disturbances (such as atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia), inadequate coronary artery blood flow (such as myocardial ischemia and myocardial infarction), and electrolyte disturbances (such as hypokalemia and hyperkalemia).

Cardiovascular Pharmacology deals with the study of the effects of drugs upon the heart or circulatory system. It mainly contributes to the safety profile of potential new drugs and provides pharmacological data that can be used for optimization of further compounds and the ultimate selection of compounds suitable for clinical development. The cardiac drugs affect the function of the heart in three main ways. They can affect the force of contraction of the heart muscle (inotropic effects), they can affect the frequency of the heart beat or heart rate (chronotropic effects) or they can affect the regularity of the heart beat (rhythmic effects). Drugs can also affect blood vessels by altering the state of compression of the smooth muscle in the vessel wall, altering its diameter and accordingly directing the volume of blood stream. Such medications are classified as vasoconstrictors or vasodilators depending on the smooth muscle lining contraction and relaxation respectively.

Gynecological disorders are a common cause of morbidity among women of reproductive age worldwide. In developing countries, gynecological emergencies present enormous challenges given the weak health infrastructure in these settings. Whereas reports indicate that approximately 1.4 million gynecological emergency visits to emergency department are recorded in the USA accounting for 24.3 visits per 1000 women of reproductive age (15 - 44 years), equivalent data for developing countries are not readily available. However acute gynecological conditions are important causes of morbidity and mortality in these countries and constitute significant public health problems.

This review will highlight common gynecological emergencies in the tropics and discuss current evidence based approaches to their management.

The most common gynecological emergencies are ectopic pregnancy, acute pelvic inflammatory disease, miscarriages and complicated ovarian cysts. Other gynecological conditions which may present as emergencies are menstrual disorders, bleeding gynecological malignancies, coital laceration and sexual assault. In the tropics, ectopic pregnancy and complications of unsafe abortion are the most common life threatening gynecological emergencies.

Endocrine emergencies are a collection of rare and extreme manifestations of common endocrine disorders that are often triggered by an inciting event, such as an acute infection. An endocrine emergency may be the first presentation of the underlying endocrine disorder. The neurologic and systemic complications of endocrine disorders generally worsen with increasing severity of the endocrine dysfunction. However, the rate of change is important, as rapid alterations may result in significant neurologic dysfunction, while severe but chronic endocrine dysfunction may have only minimal symptoms. As many of these endocrine emergencies can be successfully managed if accurately and promptly diagnosed, clinical neurologists should be aware of the neurologic manifestations of endocrine disorders.

Cardio-toxicity is a condition when there is damage to the heart muscle. It is the occurrence of heart electrophysiology dysfunction or muscle damage. The heart becomes weaker and is not as efficient in pumping and therefore circulating blood. This may be due to chemotherapy drugs, or other medications used to control respective disease.