OK, Students, find a comfortable seat, get your notebooks, pens, and reading materials together, and prepare for Lecture Number 1. This lecture is on the valves of the heart and the pathophysiology of Myocardial Infarctions.

The course material will be available on September 16, 2007. I hope to see you all present then. In the meantime, please feel free to explore the other pages on this site.

Before we begin our "in-house" discussion, it might be a good idea to familiarize yourself with an overview of the four heart valves. That can be easily accomplished by paying a visit to The Texas Heart Institute.

It is important that you familiarize yourself with both the normal heart sounds as well as heart sounds during the disease process. A convenient way of doing this is to visit the Heart Sound and Murmurs Page and read the accompanying text that explains precisely what you are listening to and the reason(s) for the abberation. You may download these heart sounds and save them to your computer for further reference, if you feel so inclined.

To further enhance your learning experience, I strongly recommend taking a beautifully designed tutorial and subsequent quiz at The Blaufuss Multimedia Center.

To listen to several representative files, click on the links below. Be sure you turn your speaker volume up and turn off any extraneous sound sources.

1. Normal Heart Sound
2. Mitral Regurgitation
3. Mitral Stenosis

The Myocardial Infarction

Let us begin our discussion of myocardial infarctions by first understanding the basic pathology involved. For a comprehensive overview of this important condition, please click here.
Addional documents, including case studies, will soon be available for download directly from this page. COMING SOON