Introduction to Clinical Cardiology [antikvár]

Preface The contents of this book are not meant to cover the field of cardiology comprehensively. My aim is to provide a concise textbook that students of cardiology can use when evaluating patients with possible cardiac problems. No cardiologist knows everything there is to know about cardiology, but I have tried to include the most important points I have learned and taught over the past 30 years. Many students, house staff, and cardiology fellow trainees spend 4 to 8 weeks on a cardiology consult or inpatient service. Experience varies, but hospitalized patients as well as office patients are evaluated. A student, house officer, or cardiology trainee on an inpatient consultation service sees patients in acute cardiac units, on the general medical service, and on nonmedical services. Often, the patients on the nonmedical service are seen either for a preoperative assessment of a possible cardiac condition or a postoperative assessment of a symptom, sign, or abnonnal laboratory value that may be related to a cardiac condition. In this context, the student of cardiology is often faced with a complex diagnostic and therapeutic problem rather than a simple problem in physical diagnosis. One rapidly leams that patients with heart disease may have many clinical presentations; for example, some patients present with severe chest pain or life-threatening arrhythmias, while others may be asymptomatic but have an abnormality found on physical examination or routine laboratory tests such as the electrocardiogram. The goal of this book is to allow the student of cardiology to arrive at a clinical diagnosis based on the history, physical examination, and commonly used laboratory evaluations in cardiovascular medicine. Because the ability to communicate well with patients and colleagues and an understanding of the role of clinical trials are hallmarks of the excellent physician, I have included chapters on these subjects at the beginning of the book. Most students, and many physicians, are not familiar with the modem diagnostic tools of cardiology. Thus, early in the book, I devote nine chapters to commonly used cardiovascular diagnostic tests, emphasizing their usefulness and limitations. Eleven chapters are devoted to the evaluation of patients with specific signs, symptoms, or electrocardiographic abnormalities. Included in this section are chapters on evaluation of the cardiac patient undergoing noncardiac surgery and evaluation of the pregnant patient with cardiac symptoms. I think these latter two chapters will be particularly useful on inpatient consultation services. Seven chapters are devoted to the definition, pathophysiology, diagnosis, and