Hello and welcome to the zero to finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about acute left ventricular failure.

And you can find written notes on this topic at zero to finals.com slash acute LVF

or in the cardiology section of the Zero Definals Medicine Book.

So let's get straight into it.

Acute left ventricular failure occurs when an acute event results in the left ventricle

being unable to move blood efficiently through the left side of the heart and into the

systemic circulation. Cardiac output is the volume of blood ejected by the heart per minute.

Stroke volume is the volume of blood ejected during each beat.

Cardiac output is the product of stroke volume times the heart rate.

When blood cannot efficiently flow through the left side of the heart, there's a backlog of

blood waiting in the left atrium, the pulmonary veins and the lungs.

As these areas experience increased volume and pressure of blood,

they start to leak fluid and they cannot reabsorb fluid from the surrounding tissues,

and this results in pulmonary edema.

Pulmonary edema is where the lung tissue and the alveoli are filled with interstitial fluid.

This interferes with normal gas exchange in the lungs, causing shortness of breath and reduced oxygen saturation.

Let's talk about the triggers.

Acute left ventricular failure is often the result of decompensated chronic heart failure.

So a patient has chronic heart failure and this for some reason becomes decompensated

and they go into acute left-entricular failure.

The potential triggers for acute left-entricular failure are iatrogenic, for example, aggressive

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