Cardiac Dominance

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, affecting over half a billion people each year. Even more alarming than its prevalence today, the threat of cardiovascular disease continues to rise. Each year, more and more individuals suffer from this debilitating affliction. While the most important risk factors are weight, diet, and age, cardiovascular disease manages to reach even the most conscious among us. It can strike our loved ones and older relatives, sometimes without warning, and often fatally. 

A well documented anatomical occurrence, cardiac dominance, appears to play a role in the development and severity of cardiovascular disease. Cardiac dominance, explained further across this website, describes the connections between the coronary arteries of the heart. The differences in arterial development and connection may have a great impact on the body's risk of cardiovascular disease, as well as one's recovery following a few common surgical treatments for cardiovascular disease. Since cardiac dominance cannot be controlled, and individuals cannot know their own cardiac dominance pattern without screenings normally performed prior to heart surgery, understanding its role in cardiovascular disease is crucial. Refined screening procedures could save lives if determining cardiac dominance could be made more accessible, as doctors would then better provide information and treatment plans to patients. Furthermore, if cardiac dominance strongly corresponds to increased risk of cardiovascular disease or death following its treatment, risk may be more accurately assessed and accounted for in advance.

The studies present on this site were all collected through the use of PubMed and with the intent of finding three comprehensive analyses recently performed in the field at hand. Each study pertains to cardiac dominance and its effect on either the risk of heart attacks, or patient recovery and quality of life following common treatments for coronary artery disease and acute coronary syndrome. These conditions are two of the most common forms of cardiovascular disease, thus a wide pool of recent patient records exists to draw from. While none of the studies reference each other or focus on the exact same nuances of the topic, they together offer a reliable look into the relationship between cardiac domiance and cardiovascular disease.

As outlined in this website, cardiac dominance presents a promising new piece of the puzzle that is cardiovascular disease, and the findings of the three selected studies reflect the potential understanding that may be gained with further experimentation.