Question: What are you particularly learning about?

Kate Kuyt answered on 11 Jun 2018:

Hi;

So I am learning more about the heart. In your heart you have four chambers (or rooms). Between each of these is a value, these are like doors that mean the blood can flow through the heart in the right direction.
You also have a value between one of these chambers (called the left ventricle) and your blood vessels. We call this the aortic valve.

In some people as they get older their aortic valve does not work as well, it becomes thick and stiff. This means that the heart has to work REALLY hard to push the blood through and into your body.
If the heart has to work really hard with each heart beat after I while it can stop working as well.

I look at scans of the heart in people who have a thick and stuff aortic valve to check how well their heart is working. These are people who need an operation to make their valve thin again and help the heart.

I also then look at pictures of the same peoples heart after they have had their operation to check the heart is recovering and working happily again.

The really interesting part is there is two different operations the patients can have, once I have looked at all the scans I should be able to see which operation helps the heart recover best.

I hope that makes sense and isn’t too long, please ask more questions.