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Cardiologist
Specializes in the heart and cardiovascular system — diagnoses and treats heart disease.
Did you know?
Your heart beats about 100,000 times a day and pumps around 7,500 litres (2,000 gallons) of blood every single day.
How subjects help
- Biology: Understand how blocked arteries starve the heart of oxygen and cause heart attacks.
- Chemistry: Choose medicines that lower blood pressure, thin the blood or control cholesterol.
- Physics: Read the electrical signals of a heartbeat on a heart trace to find a faulty rhythm.
- Mathematics: Calculate how much blood the heart pumps each minute from scan measurements.
A famous name
Helen B. Taussig: Founded paediatric cardiology and conceived the 1944 "blue baby" operation that saved children.
Try it yourself: Take your pulse like a nurse
- Put two fingers (not your thumb) on the inside of your wrist, below your thumb, until you feel a beat.
- Count the beats for 15 seconds, then multiply by 4. That is your resting heart rate per minute.
- If you can, do 20 star jumps, then count again straight away.
- Check every minute until it is back to where it started. How long did it take?
Nurses, doctors and paramedics take a pulse all day: it is one of the quickest ways to tell how a body is coping.
Also try: Check a medicine label (a made-up one).
Known for it in
USA, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Japan