Cardiomyopathy (Nursing)

00:00 Hi, I'm Professor Lawes.

00:02 And this is going to be an introduction to Cardiomyopathy.

00:05 Now, just as a quick review. Here's your heart. It's amazing.

00:10 Don't speed passes, because look at that when you see the left side filling up, the right side filling up heading off to parts unknown, it's pretty amazing how it works.

00:20 But we're going to do something even cooler.

00:23 But first, let's give you the real definition of what cardiomyopathy is? It is a group of diseases that affect the muscle, the heart muscle. It also decreases its ability to pump.

00:34 So, we're talking about several diseases that affect the heart muscle and make it less effective.

00:40 They'll either be primary or secondary.

00:43 Primary means it arose exclusively from some cardiac issue or damage.

00:48 Secondary means it was caused by something else outside of the heart.

00:52 So, it might be a disease or systemic condition, but it is not directly the heart.

00:58 Okay, so here's the view and it's not quite as exciting because it's not moving. But orient yourself to where you are.

01:03 You see the aorta, the left atrium, the left ventricle, and closest to us the right atrium, and the right ventricle.

01:10 Now, here's what we're going to do.

01:12 You see that blue sheet that you see right there? That's the plane that we're going to cut.

01:17 So, you'll see the scalpel coming in.

01:20 Yes. And we're essentially going to remove the right side of your heart.

01:24 So, the pictures that you see, we looking just at the left side of your heart, when we're talking about cardiomyopathy. Ready? Here we go.

01:32 That's it. Now, we're looking at the left side of the heart.

01:35 But I want you to reorient yourself again. See the aorta? You got the left atrium and the left ventricle.

01:41 You've got the mitral valve in the middle.

01:43 This is an example of a normal heart.

01:46 One of the big secrets in nursing school on exams, is to recognize normal, so you know what is abnormal.

01:54 We are definitely going to show you some abnormal things that happen in cardiomyopathy.

01:58 Let's take a look at the first one. It's called dilated cardiomyopathy.

02:03 This is what you'll see in 90% of the cases.

02:07 Now, we'll go into detail later further on in the series, We just want you to recognize what it looks like in this series.

02:14 So, a normal heart. Dilated cardiomyopathy.

02:19 Take a look at what you see as being different between these two images.

02:24 What's gotten bigger? Yeah, those walls look thicker.

02:28 Things look very different in dilated cardiomyopathy.

02:32 Now, let's go back to a normal heart.

02:33 So you have kind of a frame of reference.

02:35 Note those arrows. They show you how wide or thick the wall is, because here we're going to talk about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM.

02:45 Look at the difference in the walls of that left ventricle.

02:49 They're extremely thick.

02:51 Remember, cardiomyopathy is a group of things that impact the function of the heart.

02:57 They decrease the function of the heart.

03:00 Think what a thick left ventricular wall would be like that.

03:04 You got less room for blood. It's going to be stiff.

03:07 It's not going to be as nimble to be able to contract and relax.

03:11 So, that's obviously going to decrease the ability of the heart to pump blood effectively.

03:16 One more. Let's talk about the normal heart first, that's able to contract. We just talked about that.

03:24 It's able to contract and release.

03:26 But this type of cardiomyopathy, look there, we made it a brick wall.

03:31 This is where you have really poor contractility.

03:35 Almost like the walls were made of brick.

03:37 And that's why we gave you that image to remember.

03:39 This is called restrictive cardiomyopathy, or RCM.

03:44 So, let's put all three of those together.

03:47 Take a look at the dilated cardiomyopathy, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and restrictive cardiomyopathy.

03:55 Now, as we study these in detail throughout the series, I want you to make sure that you keep this picture in mind.