📘 Step 1 — Curriculum Coverage

This topic uses the AIM Learning Cycle to help MBBS students understand cardiac performance, venous return and heart failure by integrating Physiology, Medicine and Clinical Correlation.

🔹 Physiology

• Describe pressure-volume loop (end-systolic volume / end-diastolic volume / ejection fraction / stroke volume / systolic work output)
• Explain the Frank-Starling mechanism of the heart for the control of cardiac output by venous return
• Describe the methods for measurement of cardiac output
• Describe normal cardiac output and venous return during rest and during activity
• Enlist the causes of abnormally high and abnormally low cardiac output
• Explain the mechanisms of normal cardiac contractility and the role of calcium ion / ATPase pumps
• Explain cardiac output (regulation / measurement) and peripheral resistance and its regulation
• Explain the factors regulating cardiac output and venous return

🩺 Clinical Importance

• Define heart failure
• Differentiate between right-sided and left-sided heart failure
• Correlate reduced cardiac output with breathlessness, edema and circulatory congestion