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Angina, also known as angina pectoris, is chest pain or pressure, usually caused by insufficient blood flow to the heart muscle (myocardium). [2] It is most commonly a symptom of coronary artery disease. [2] Angina is typically the result of partial obstruction or spasm of the arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle. [3]
Like physical resistance, vasospasms can occur due to atherosclerosis. Vasospasm is the major cause of Prinzmetal's angina. Cerebral vasospasm may arise in the context of subarachnoid hemorrhage as symptomatic vasospasm (or delayed cerebral ischemia), where it is a major contributor to post-operative stroke and mortality. Vasospasm typically ...
Individuals experiencing angina characterize the pain in different ways, but the pain is usually described as crushing, squeezing, or burning. [7] Symptoms may worsen over the course of several minutes. [4] Typical angina is aggravated by physical activity or emotional stress and is relieved by rest or nitroglycerin. [4]
Angina comes from the latin angere, which means to strangle, and pectoris comes from pectus, meaning chest—so angina pectoris loosely translates to “strangling of the chest”, which actually makes a lot of sense, because angina pectoris is caused by reduced blood flow which causes ischemia to the heart muscle, or lack of oxygen to the ...
Variant angina is caused by vasospasm, a narrowing of the coronary arteries due to contraction of the heart's smooth muscle tissue in the vessel walls. [3] In comparison, stable angina is caused by the permanent occlusion of these vessels by atherosclerosis, which is the buildup of fatty plaque and hardening of the arteries. [4]
The most important effect in angina is the widening of veins, which increases their capacity to hold blood ("venous pooling") and reduces the pressure of the blood returning to the heart (the preload). Widening of the large arteries also reduces the pressure against which the heart has to pump, the afterload. Lower preload and afterload result ...
In cardiovascular physiology, stroke volume (SV) is the volume of blood pumped from the ventricle per beat. Stroke volume is calculated using measurements of ventricle volumes from an echocardiogram and subtracting the volume of the blood in the ventricle at the end of a beat (called end-systolic volume [note 1]) from the volume of blood just prior to the beat (called end-diastolic volume).
This discovery led to this type of angina being referred to in the literature as Prinzmetal angina. [ 3 ] [ 20 ] A following study further distinguished this angina from classical angina pectoris due to the fact that the results showed that the patients with chest pain due to coronary vasospasm lacked evidence of atherosclerosis on cardiac ...