An Orthopedic Surgeon Explains: Diastolic Heart Failure

It seems that every now and then we have to deal with something other than the bones. As you can imagine, this is sub-optimal at best. Because bones. Anywhoo, I’ve been asked to discuss one of those issues with you, and today’s topic is none other than diastolic heart failure.

So surfs up, let’s get started.

It starts when the heart, the giver and bringer of Ancef has some issues. Maybe dudes stressin’ and it’s got his blood pressure all out of whack. Maybe there’s some valve problem with one of the 3 or 4 of those things. It needs more force to get the blood through, and because of this, it gets a gnarly workout. So after 10 years of getting its pump on, just like my biceps, it gets bigger and stiffer.

Now I know bigger and stiffer doesn’t sound like a bad thing (am I right? Up top.)

It’s like this. Let’s say you got a small tibia you reamed to 11, and are trying to put a 10 nail in but it’s not going. What does a strapping young orthopod do? You get a bigger mallet. Same principle here.

So the heart gets massively jacked, and has a hard time chillaxing. Like that one nurse that keeps on paging because the dressing is soaked, but it’s really not, and you’re in the ED with like 8 septic knees that aren’t septic… I’LL GET TO IT WHEN I CAN, DOLORES!!! But I digress.

It doesn’t relax, meaning the gooey stuff can’t get in, and then the gooey stuff can’t get out. You can imagine why this would create issues. Mainly anesthesia issues. And do those peeps have issues.

tl:dr: big and stiff not necessarily a good thing. anesthesia has issues.

See, you got a heart, and this heart has issues, right?