October 31st, 2023 By: Mrs. McCleery
Cardiac Unit
In this Unit, we learned about the cardiovascular system and how it worked. I learned that the transfer of blood throughout the pulmonary system is very complex. It starts by entering the heart through the Super Vena Cavaa and the Inferior Vena Cava. This takes the blood straight to the Right Atrium. The blood then flows to the Right Ventricle by passing through the Trisuspid Valve. The blood is then pumped through the Pulmonary Valve up to the Pulmonary Artery and out to the lungs to get oxygenated. The blood is circulated through the lungs and returned to the heart through the Pulmonary Veins. The blood then flows into the Left Atrium and then through the Mitral Valve to the Left Ventricle. After this, the blood is pumped through the Aortic Valve to the Aortia and out of the heart to the body.
Then, I made a 3D heart diagram. My partner and I made ours out of styrofoam and labeled each different part of the heart. I also had a cardiac rhythm project, in which I and a group of my peers worked together to demonstrate the rhythms of the heart with dances. My group did Bradycardia, Wenckeback, Asystole, and Ventricular Fibrillation.
Medical Innovations Unit
In our Medical Innovations Unit, everyone in my class was assigned a Medical invention. The invention I was assigned was Dialysis. Dialysis is a type of treatment that helps your body remove extra fluid and waste products from your blood when the kidneys are not able to. Dialysis improves patients' lives by cleaning and filtering the blood that their damaged kidneys cannot. After cleaning the blood, the patient's anemia should be treated providing them with more energy and the patients should begin to feel better and be able to get enjoyment from their life. Dialysis has to be done multiple times a week and it takes from four to six hours. This can be extremely inconvenient for patients who cannot drive and it takes a serious toll on a patient's lifestyle.
Some of the things I learned while researching Dialysis were:
Thomas Graham is considered the father of modern-day dialysis.
Georg Haas was the doctor who performed what was considered the first human dialysis in the German town of Giessen in 1924.
It was not until 1945 that Willem Johan Kolff achieved the first clinically successful hemodialysis in a human patient.
37 million Americans have kidney disease.
More than 562,000 Americans are on dialysis
9 out of 10 people with kidney disease are unaware they have it, and half of those with severely reduced kidney function (but not yet on dialysis) do not know they have kidney disease.
Kidney disease is the fastest-growing noncommunicable disease in the U.S.
Dialysis is complicated. It requires a team of caregivers. Your team may include your nephrologist (kidney specialist), a dialysis nurse, and technicians.
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