"Heart as a Pump" Quiz

This is an online quiz covering facts and concepts relating to the mechanical function of the heart. After you mark your choice for each question, you will be provided feedback regarding why your choice was correct or incorrect. At the end of the quiz, you can determine your total score. The questions are similar to those that will appear on this year's exam. Your score is not recorded or stored anywhere, and you can take the quiz as many times as you like.

The first set of questions deals with the the events during each of the phases or periods of the normal cardiac cycle. Please use the Wiggers diagrams below showing systemic arterial, left ventricular, and left atrial pressures to answer the questions. In some cases, more than one letter may be circled to achieve the correct answer.

For the following set of questions dealing with the concepts of preload and afterload, please indicate whether the description refers to preload only, afterload only, both preload and afterload, or neither preload nor afterload.

The diagram below contains five sets of tracings, labeled "A". "B", "C", "D", and "E". Each set consists of aortic, ventricular, and atrial pressures and each represents the pattern of pressures that would occur in a normal heart or in a heart with a particular valvular disorder. For clarity, the ventricular pressure is colored red in the first cardiac cycle of each set of tracings. Use this diagram to answer the next three questions.