Health and medicine: Getting Ea (arterial elastance) from the PV loop

Find out how to use the PV loop to draw the Ea (Arterial Elastance) line, and what it represents. Rishi is a pediatric infectious disease physician and works at Khan Academy.

Health and medicine

The medical world can be a confusing place. Patients, their families, and even students entering health fields might feel overwhelmed by the large vocabularies and complicated explanations. We hope to make understanding the medical world a bit easier. Look around! These videos do not provide medical advice and are for informational purposes only. The videos are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of something you have read or seen in any Khan Academy video.

Changing the PV Loop

Once you’ve learned about the PV loop, a natural question arises - Does it ever change shape? It turns out that there are precisely three things that can change the shape of the loop: 1. Preload, 2. Afterload, and 3. Contractility. That’s it! The tricky part comes when you try to change one and you realize that the body begins to change the other two as well as a natural consequence. In order to simplify, you’ll find that PV loops are sometimes even described as PV boxes. You’ll get to learn about PV loops, PV boxes, and even play around with them yourself in this tutorial!

Topic: Science

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