S3 Heart Sound and Gallop Pathophysiology Essay.

Mrs. K is a 60-year-old white female who presented to the ER with complaints of her heart “beating out of my chest.” She is complaining that she is having increased episodes of shortness of breath over the last month and in fact has to sleep on 4 pillows. She also notes that the typical swelling she\\\’s had in her ankles for years has started to get worse over the past two months, making it especially difficult to get her shoes on toward the end of the day. In the past week, she\\\’s been experiencing fatigue and decreased urine output. Her past history is positive for an acute anterior wall myocardial infarction and coronary artery bypass surgery. She was a 2 pack a day smoker, but quit 8 years ago.S3 Heart Sound and Gallop Pathophysiology Essay.

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On physical examination, auscultation of the heart revealed a rumbling S3 gallop and inspiratory crackles. She has +3 edema of the lower extremities.S3 Heart Sound and Gallop Pathophysiology Essay.

1. Discuss the pathophysiology of an S3 heart sound and include causes for an S3 gallop?

Heart sounds and gallops tend to cause a lot of alarm for everyone who experiences them for the first time. It could be a sign of an alarming heart condition or just a normal occasional finding in the heart’s blood pumping mechanisms, especially for the young people and athletes (Medvedev, 2019). S3 clinically implicates the third heart sound, which is also referred to as ventricular gallops. It is often a difficult sound to hear, but has the following techniques to get to it: it is usually low-pitched and fades away on use of the stethoscope diaphragm but reappears on the use of the bell. Moreover, the sound is listened to at the apex of the cardiac muscles, when the patient is positioned to the left lateral decubitus(Medvedev, 2019).S3 Heart Sound and Gallop Pathophysiology Essay.

The sound usually occurs when there has been an S2, and the mitral valve has opened and has allowed filling of the very compliant left ventricle by a huge amount of blood passively according to Tissot, Singh andSekarski(2018). The third heart sound (S3) as mentioned earlier, could be an alarm or not. It is an alarm when the filling of the left ventricle is audible. This is because of the excessively compliant myocardium, that paves way for the dilated left ventricle. The sound is often a sure sign of systolic failure of the heart or congestive failure of the heart.S3 Heart Sound and Gallop Pathophysiology Essay.

The sound is usually normal for children and adults of ages up to 40 because people of ages below 40 have often had no significant heart problems unless otherwise. Above age 40, the sound indicates an abnormality, which could either be because of other causative factors of dysfunction of the ventricles or an increase in the blood volume in the ventricles (Tissot, Singh and Sekarski, 2018)S3 Heart Sound and Gallop Pathophysiology Essay.