Cardiovascular disease overview

Cardiovascular diseases - coronary heart disease (CHD), heart failure, and hypertension - are leading causes of mortality and morbidity. CHD is a disease of the coronary vasculature that thrombotic events can turn into an acute myocardial infarction; MI survivors are prone to heart failure and sudden cardiac death from ventricular arrhythmias. Uncontrolled hypertension can lead to CHD, heart failure, and stroke, so patients are often treated for multiple interconnected diseases.

One disease feeds the next: hypertension damages vessels -> coronary disease -> myocardial infarction -> heart failure and arrhythmias. That is why the same drug classes reappear across this whole chapter.

📖 “CHD, heart failure, and hypertension are leading causes of death; they are interconnected (hypertension -> CHD -> MI -> heart failure/arrhythmias).”