Coronary Artery Disease Essays - Medicine, Circulatory System, RTT

Coronary Artery Disease Essays - Medicine, Circulatory System, RTT Coronary Artery Disease Student's Name University affiliation Course Instructor Date Coronary Artery Disease Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is the most common of the known heart diseases. This disease develops when the arteries that supply the heart with blood, nutrients and oxygen are damaged. Coronary Artery Disease is characterized with hardened and narrowed blood vessels as result of the buildup of cholesterol and other materials known as plague in the arterial walls (Wessel, 2004). Plague and cholesterol block the arteries making it hard for them to transport blood, nutrient and even oxygen to other parts of the body where they are needed. The heart muscles fail to get blood and oxygen and can lead to a severe heart attack or angina. If this problem continues for a long time, a person can suffer from a heart failure and/or arrhythmias. These two conditions are fatal if not treated as soon as they are detected. The development of the coronary artery can be a gradual process. There are a number of risk factors that are associated with CAD such as the height of a person, obesity, body m etabolic index BMI, physical fitness, and lifestyle. In most cases, it starts from the young age and develops slowly up to the old age. When the arteries are narrowed, they tend to develop new blood vessels as a way of trying to get the blood to the heart. However, the mushrooming blood vessels do not manage to supply the required blood to the heart. Instead, what happens is that they cause more blockage of the main artery. Sometimes, because of increase blood pressure, the plague raptures and blocks the blood supply to the heart. Coronary artery disease is a serious disease and can be avoided only by practicing a healthy lifestyle. It is the most common heart disease in the United States affecting more than 15 million Americans (Borgeraas et al., 2014). In the United Kingdom, Coronary Artery Disease is the most feared human killer among the known diseases. Over 2.3 million people, comprising 1.4 million and 0.85 million men and women respectively are living CAD in the United Kingdom (Borgeraas et al., 2014). In this paper, I will p rovide a comprehensive review of two research papers related to the coronary artery disease. In each paper, I will look at the hypothesis of the study, population used in the research and the study design of the article. The two research papers are: Relationship of Physical Fitness versus Body Mass Index with Coronary Artery Disease and Cardiovascular Events in Women by Wessel. The other research paper that I will review is, Genetically Determined Height and Coronary Artery Disease by Nelson et al. Relationship of the Physical Fitness vs. the Body Mass Index (BMI) with Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) and Cardio Vascular (CV) Events in Women Study hypothesis - The authors of this study hypothesized that there exist a relationship between obesity, waist circumference, waist height ratio and waist-hip ratio and the physical fitness and the postmenopausal estrogen with coronary artery disease risk factors, adverse cardiovascular and angiographic coronary artery disease events in women evaluated for suspected myocardial ischemia (Colombo et al., 2015; Wessel, 2004). Population-Multicenter prospective cohort study - 936 women were enrolled at four US academic medical centers at the time of clinically indicated coronary angiography (Wessel, 2004). Study Design-Among the adult women and men in the US, close to two-thirds are overweight and also more than one-third are obese, and these proportions are rapidly increasing. There have been previous studies that show physical activity, and fitness is predictive of Cardio Vascular risk. However, many studies of physical activity and fitness have excluded women with known or suspected Coronary Heart Disease (CHD). The Roles of obesity and fitness as independent risk factors for CHD and adverse events in women remain unresolved (Wessel, 2004). This study was observational in nature, across four years 936 women were enrolled in this study. Enrollees were initially assessed, and a follow-up was conducted six weeks after enrollment and then yearly. The Participants were questioned about the occurrence of adverse events, and if they responded with any adverse events physicians were reached out to for confirmation, dates, and any documentation available (Wessel, 2004). To evaluate physical fitness, the