Hello and welcome to a completely new series of the zero to finals podcast

where we're going to be going through the updated content and guidelines to cover the

whole of medicine and we're going to start with a series on cardiology.

My name is Tom and in this first episode, I'm going to be talking to you about

cardiovascular disease. And you can find written notes on this topic at zero to finals.com

slash CVD or in the cardiology section of the zero to finals medicine book. So let's get straight into it.

Let's start by talking about atherosclerosis.

Athero refers to soft or porridge-like and sclerosis refers to hardening.

Atherosclerosis is a combination of atheromas,

which are fatty deposits in the artery wall, and sclerosis is a combination of atheromas which are fatty deposits in the artery wall

and sclerosis which is hardening or stiffening of the blood vessel walls

atherosclerosis affects the medium and large arteries and it's caused by chronic inflammation

and activation of the immune system in

the artery wall. This causes the deposition of lipids in the artery wall followed by the

development of fibrous atheromatous plaques. These plaques result in stiffening, stenosis and plaque rupture.

Stiffening of the artery walls leads to hypertension or raise blood pressure

and extra strain on the heart as it tries to pump blood against extra resistance in the arterial system.

Stenosis leads to reduce blood flow, for example in angina, where there's reduced flow of blood through the coronary arteries

due to stenosis or narrowing of those arteries.

And plaque rupture can create a thrombus that breaks away, travels through the blood vessel and

blocks a distant vessel, leading to ischemia, because there's no blood flow beyond that thrombus.

An example of this is acute coronary syndrome where a coronary artery becomes blocked.

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