Cardiology Overview for Medical Coding Course https://www.cco.us/club/
Alicia: One of the things that is so important for us as coders is to know the anatomy and the physiology of what's going on with the different body systems.
Q: The conduction system of the heart can lead to coronary artery disease, cardiomyopathy and valve disease.
A: So I work up this great quick study for you, I told Laureen I was going to be talking a lot tonight.
Laureen: Yay!
Alicia: Might have to make it bigger or I won't be able to see it [laughs].
The conduction of the heart, the first thing you need to know is the anatomy. When you're looking at the heart, see these red lines , those are the electrical system, you could say, of the heart or what powers the heart. We have the SA node, which is the sinoatrial node.
They're at the top and you've got those three -- think of them like little rivers of electricity that ran down. And then you've got the AV node or the atrioventricular node and these nodes snapping from one to the other is what makes the heart pump because it sends an electrical current down that line that forks and goes to the bottom of the heart around the ventricles.
If you didn't know, you've got the right atrium at the top, the right ventricle at the bottom, left atrium at the top and the left ventricle at the bottom. So, the ventricle is what squeezes because the electrical current tells it to and whoosh! All that blood goes up through the heart. OK?
Go ahead and slide down just a little bit. There is a description kind of how that works. You first going to get the electrical current in the SA node and then it's going to shoot over to the AV node, and it does it in about 60 to 100 times a minute. So if you can think of that little zap, zap, zap, that fast. Amazing how that works. This is known as the "natural pacemaker" for the heart. And when you're having problems with your heart or the electrical portion of your heart, that's why people get pacemakers, in fact.
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