Ballistocardiograph
Encyclopedia
Ballistocardiograph or BCG detects and measures recoil
Recoil
Recoil is the backward momentum of a gun when it is discharged. In technical terms, the recoil caused by the gun exactly balances the forward momentum of the projectile and exhaust gasses, according to Newton's third law...

 of the human body due to the momentum
Momentum
In classical mechanics, linear momentum or translational momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object...

 of the blood
Blood
Blood is a specialized bodily fluid in animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells....

 that the heart
Heart
The heart is a myogenic muscular organ found in all animals with a circulatory system , that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions...

 is currently pumping.

Ballistocardiography is a technique for producing a graphical representation of repetitive motions of the human body arising from the sudden ejection of blood into the great vessels of each heart beat. To be more specific a BCG measures the impact of blood colliding with aortic
Aorta
The aorta is the largest artery in the body, originating from the left ventricle of the heart and extending down to the abdomen, where it branches off into two smaller arteries...

 arch, which causes the body to have an upward thrust
Thrust
Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's second and third laws. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction on that system....

, then the downward thrust of the blood descending.

One Example of the use of a BCG is a ballistocardiographic scale, which measures the recoil of the persons body who is on the scale. A BCG scale is able to show a persons heart rate as well as their weight.

The term ballistocardiograph originated from the Roman ballista
Ballista
The ballista , plural ballistae, was an ancient missile weapon which launched a large projectile at a distant target....

, which is derived from the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 word ballein (to throw), a machine for launching missiles, plus the Greek word for heart and writing.

See also

  • Advanced cardiac life support
    Advanced cardiac life support
    Advanced cardiac life support or Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support refers to a set of clinical interventions for the urgent treatment of cardiac arrest and other life threatening medical emergencies, as well as the knowledge and skills to deploy those interventions.Extensive medical knowledge...

     (ACLS)
  • Cardiac arrest
    Cardiac arrest
    Cardiac arrest, is the cessation of normal circulation of the blood due to failure of the heart to contract effectively...

  • Cardiac cycle
    Cardiac cycle
    The cardiac cycle is a term referring to all or any of the events related to the flow or blood pressure that occurs from the beginning of one heartbeat to the beginning of the next. The frequency of the cardiac cycle is described by the heart rate. Each beat of the heart involves five major stages...

  • EKG tech
    EKG tech
    An electrocardiogram technician is a member of the health care team whose primary duty is the performance of electrocardiograms on patients...

  • Cardiac monitoring
    Cardiac monitoring
    The phrase cardiac monitoring generally refers to continuous monitoring with electrocardiography with assessment of the patients condition relative to their cardiac rhythm. It is different from hemodynamic monitoring, which monitors the pressure and flow of blood within the circulatory system. The...

  • Heart rate monitor
    Heart rate monitor
    A heart rate monitor is a personal monitoring device which allows a subject to measure his or her heart rate in real time or record his or her heart rate for later study...

  • Holter monitor
    Holter monitor
    In medicine, a Holter monitor is a portable device for continuously monitoring various electrical activity of the cardiovascular system for at least 24 hours...

  • SCP-ECG
    SCP-ECG
    SCP-ECG, which stands for Standard communications protocol for computer assisted electrocardiography, is a standard for ECG traces, annotations, and metadata, that specifies the interchange format and a messaging procedure for ECG cart-to-host communication and for retrieval of SCP-ECG records from...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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