Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Ventricular hypertrophy
Summary
Ventricular hypertrophy (VH) is thickening of the walls of a ventricle (lower chamber) of the heart. Although left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is more common, right ventricular hypertrophy (RVH), as well as concurrent hypertrophy of both ventricles can also occur.
Ventricular hypertrophy can result from a variety of conditions, both adaptive and maladaptive. For example, it occurs in what is regarded as a physiologic, adaptive process in pregnancy in response to increased blood volume; but can also occur as a consequence of ventricular remodeling following a heart attack. Importantly, pathologic and physiologic remodeling engage different cellular pathways in the heart and result in different gross cardiac phenotypes.
In individuals with eccentric hypertrophy there may be little or no indication that hypertrophy has occurred as it is generally a healthy response to increased demands on the heart. Conversely, concentric hypertrophy can make itself known in a variety of ways. Most commonly, chest pain, either with or without exertion is present, along with shortness of breath with exertion, general fatigue, syncope, and palpitations. Overt signs of heart failure, such as edema, or shortness of breath without exertion are uncommon.
The ventricles are the chambers in the heart responsible for pumping blood either to the lungs (right ventricle) or to the rest of the body (left ventricle). Ventricular hypertrophy may be divided into two categories: concentric hypertrophy and eccentric hypertrophy. These adaptations are related to how the cardiomyocyte contractile units, called sarcomeres, respond to stressors such as exercise or pathology. Concentric hypertrophy is a result of pressure overload on the heart, resulting in parallel sarcomerogenesis (addition of sarcomere units parallel to existing units). Eccentric hypertrophy is related to volume overload and leads to the addition of sarcomeres in series.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Ontological neighbourhood