Preface --; Foreword --; 1 Presenting symptoms --; chest pain --; Skin --; Intercostal muscles and muscles attached to the chest wall --; Ribs and spine --; costo-chondral junctions --; Pleura and diaphragmatic pleura --; The pericardium --; The myocardium --; The aorta --; The oesophagus --; Anxiety and cardiac neurosis --; 2 Ischaemic heart disease --; Myocardial ischaema --; Myocardial infarction --; 3 Hypertension --; Presentation --; General considerations --; Investigations --; Treatment --; Notes on hypotensive drugs --; 4 Cardiac murmurs --; Systolic murmurs --; Diastolic murmurs --; 5 Syncope --; Dysrhythmias --; Valvular heart disease --; Congenital heart disease --; Hypotension --; Other low output states --; Pulmonary embolism --; Cardiac compression --; 6 Breathlessness --; Presenting symptoms --; Acute cardiac failure --; Chronic heart failure --; The signs of heart failure --; Investigations in cardiac failure --; Treatment of cardiac failure --; 7 Infective and invasive processes of the heart --; Pericardium --; Myocardium --; Endocardium --; 8 Electrocardiography --; Particular value of e.c.g. in practice --; Reading and recording the e.c.g. --; Some examples of common e.c.g. abnormalities --; 9 Dysrhythmias --; Presenting symptoms --; Supra-ventricular dysrhythmias --; Ventricular causes of dysrhythmia --; other dysrhythmias --; 10 Changing trends in the investigation and treatment of cardiological problems --; Investigations --; Methods of treatment --; 11 Drug therapy in practice --; Diuretics --; The?-blocking drugs --; Other antidysrhythmic drugs --; Hypotensive drugs --; Anti-anginal drugs --; 12 Present and future problems --; Changing trends of cardiac disease --; Statistics concerning heart disease --; Epidemiology and prevention --; Logistics.
Over several years working in a district general hospital as a physician with a cardiological interest, the common problems in this field are clearer. This knowledge has come through normal out-patient clinic referrals, care of in-patients, and by working in a domiciliary consultative capacity. The problems that concern family physicians nowadays are somewhat different from the problems of two or three decades ago. The accent now is very much on the implications of hypertensive and ischaemic heart disease. Rheumatic fever is rarely seen, though its sequelae may still be discovered. Hence the approach of this book is to the common problems of today in family practice, and the book is not intended to be a reference text book of cardiology. It does not include references because it has been written from personal experience gained from the treatment and management of patients with common cardiac problems. It is hoped that it will be of value primarily to family physicians because it has been written in an attempt to fill a need as measured by the problems that are referred to specialists in the cardiological field. It may prove of value to those medical students and nurses who wish to consider medical problems in a practical way, that is from the ways that cardiac problems present in practice.