Anatomy and Physiology of the Heart and Circulation

Abstract

There have been a number of major advances in the diagnosis and management of heart disease and heart failure in the past few years. Associated with these advances has been an expansion in the terminology associated with clinical cardiology. This is the first in a four-part series of articles which will review the diagnosis and management of cardiac failure in small animals, introducing some of these recent developments. By way of an introduction, it discusses the normal anatomy, physiology and regulation of the cardiovascular system, paving the way for the subsequent articles which will cover the pathophysiology of heart failure, the causes of heart disease in dogs and cats, the typical presenting signs and clinical findings associated with heart failure, and the management of the licart failure patient.