Manzano's Heart / physiology question.

I don't think they can know the size of someone's heart without opening the person up.

I think it's that way it is with any body part - if they had known Terri Schaivo's brain was 50% smaller than a normal brain there wouldn't have been such a huge political thing made of it.

afdagaghh wrote:

I think it's that way it is with any body part - if they had known Terri Schaivo's brain was 50% smaller than a normal brain there wouldn't have been such a huge political thing made of it.

you're kidding, right? the real docs who worked on her said this from the outset. it was only the phony docs employed by the religious right that had a beef with the diagnosis. and of course, physician bill frist who made a diagnosis without having ever examined her.

i'm suprised one of those nutjobs hasn't tried to resurrect schiavo yet.

Really? So MRI and CT technology don't actually work? You have to crack the chest cavity open to see the heart?

EKG...ultrasound..most runners hearst are larger thav average. I know I got mine checked out b/c of a heart murmur and they said that since I ran so much it was above average but if I stopped running for a long period of time it would shrink back to "average" size.

je wrote:

Ejection fraction, the amount that your left ventricle can pump is 70liters per minute? Is this correct anyone.They consider anything above 55L-60L is considered still normal range for heart patients.

Ejection fraction is measured as a %, not in strict liters per minute terms. Do you mean 70% vs 55%-60%?

just checking some figures, normal resting stroke volume is 5 L/min. Vigorous exercise can raise it to 14 L/min or better.

So which technology is it - MRI, CT, EKG, or ultrasound?

And if ultrasound is effective, how come sometimes doctors don't realize there are twins until labor? Or doctors don't know the size of a baby until it's out of the womb?

And also, using a quick google search of "Schiavo brain", I couldn't find any articles that confirmed that doctors knew her brain size before the autopsy. They knew she was a vegetable, but based on my 5-minute search, I don't think they knew the size of her brain. If anyone can find an article on this, that would be appreciated.

Can we get someone qualified (like a doctor) to answer this?

afdagaghh wrote:

So which technology is it - MRI, CT, EKG, or ultrasound?

And if ultrasound is effective, how come sometimes doctors don't realize there are twins until labor? Or doctors don't know the size of a baby until it's out of the womb?

And also, using a quick google search of "Schiavo brain", I couldn't find any articles that confirmed that doctors knew her brain size before the autopsy. They knew she was a vegetable, but based on my 5-minute search, I don't think they knew the size of her brain. If anyone can find an article on this, that would be appreciated.

Can we get someone qualified (like a doctor) to answer this?

i'm not a doctor, nor am i qualified, but i think i know the answer to your terri schiavo question. i believe that her her husband didn't want to subject her to any more tests, thinking that she had been through enough. i believe that part of the debate was about why he would be unwilling to let her undergo just one more test.

article here-

http://www.highlandernews.com/articles/2005/07/14/sports/04manzano.txt

-Manzano tests out as elite athlete-

BY STEVE HABEL, HIGHLANDER SPORTS EDITOR

University of Texas photo

Former Marble Falls distance runner Leonel Manzano crosses the finish line first in last month's NCAA 1,500-meters. A series of tests conducted last show Manzano is an elite level athlete.

Texas professor finds Marble Falls runner in class with best ever tested

AUSTIN -- Every one who has ever met or worked with Leonel Manzano knows he is a very special person. Now -- on the heels of a series of tests for physical prowess by a noted University of Texas kinesiology professor -- it seems that Manzano is even more than the sum of his parts.

After winning the 1,500-meter run at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships last month in Sacramento as a freshman at the University of Texas, Manzano was tested by University of Texas professor Ed Coyle to determine his physical prowess. Coyle has been in the news recently after releasing the results of his seven-year study of champion cyclist and Austin resident Lance Armstrong. That study found that Armstrong is among an elite class of athletes far superior to all but a handful of those ever tested.

It seems that there is another such athlete in Austin, but he hails from Marble Falls. Manzano, during a stress test done and an echocardiogram late last month at the University, has been discovered to have a heart chamber with approximately 20 percent more capacity than a heart of a normal person his size.

"Dr. Coyle said that my heart is the size of a well-conditioned athlete of about 6-foot-6," said Manzano, who is 5-foot-5 and weighs 125 pounds. "These tests showed that have more heart capacity that a normal athlete of my size and training. It was really something to hear those findings coming from the guy that did the all the tests on Lance Armstrong."

Coyle's tests on Armstrong showed the six-time Tour de France champion has a strong heart that can beat more than 200 times a minute operating at maximum capacity and pump an exceptionally large volume of blood and oxygen to his legs -- only about 100 other men on earth, who have been tested, have comparable abilities and only two other competitive cyclists that Coyle has tested in the past 20 years have even come close to Armstrong's 200 heartbeats per minute.

"We did these tests on Leo a few weeks after he won the NCAAs and when he was not in his peak physical condition, so returning with these results is really quite extraordinary," Coyle said. "You hate to put the added pressure of expectations of young athletes just because they are found to be so special physically so we will just continue to enjoy Leo as he excels at his own pace and desire and continue to test him and help him when he thinks he needs it."

Is Manzano in the same class of athlete as Armstrong? After just one series of tests, that declaration may be a bit premature but Manzano said he was "excited and honored just to be mentioned in the same sentence as Armstrong."

"Dr. Coyle said that my body compares favorably with the top of the athletes he has tested, and -- based on all the great athletes he has studied -- that is quite an honor," Manzano said.

After winning the NCAA championship, Manzano has been taking things easy the past month or so and only recently resumed abbreviated training in preparation for his return to competition in October. In the meantime, he had been holding down a job as a runner (that would be an appropriate title) at a local Ford dealership until last week.

"I stopped working because I am starting summer school in the second session this week, so I moved back to Austin," Manzano said. "I am going to take a couple of classes to get a jump on the fall semester and get back into some light training."

Manzano said that his status as NCAA champion has finally sunk in, but -- in typical fashion -- he credited all those that helped him get to the pinnacle of the college 1,500-meter club rather than blow his own horn.

"A lot of people helped me and sacrificed their money and their time to allow me to get the where I am now," Manzano said. "It is more a credit to their belief in me than to my efforts that I was able to accomplish the things I did. I am going to continue to work hard to make sure I am as good as I can be because they would expect that effort from me."

first of all, it is an extremely rare case that an ob doesn't know when there are twins. most of the time this is due to one twin blocking a view of another one. if follow-up ultrasounds aren't done, then you won't know there are twins.

second, unless you are doing an ultrasound right up until birth, you won't know exactly how big the baby will be. the growth curve for a fetus is massive. further, most ultrasounds done aren't of extremely high resolution. who needs to spend the money to determine the exact size of a baby, down to the centimeter?

lastly, the docs who actually examined schiavo, and weren't swayed by the religious right, predicted the atrophy (i did a google search too bold is mine):

"Dr. Ron Cranford, a neurologist at the University of Minnesota, assessed Schiavo's brain function in 2001 as part of a court-ordered examination. His exam showed that Schiavo's cerebral cortex had been completely destroyed and replaced by cerebrospinal fluid. The upper brain was about 80 percent destroyed, and there was also damage to the lower brain. The only part of the brain that remained intact was the brain stem, which controls involuntary functions such as breathing and heartbeat—allowing Schiavo to survive (with a feeding tube) even though she no longer had any cognitive function. He was quoted in Florida Today as saying, "[Schiavo] has no electrical activity in her cerebral cortex on an EEG (electroencephalogram), and a CT (computerized tomography) scan showed massive atrophy in that region." [13] "

http://www.answers.com/topic/terri-schiavo-medical-patient

Wow this has nothing to do with manzano.

I kept saying to myself that worst thing for her would be if she was found to have cognitive activity. Can you imagine just basically living in the dark for 14 years. You would go insane.

This happened to a French boy after some kind of accident. He couldnt move talk, see, taste, but he could hear. He could move part of his thumb which allowed him to write a book begging the government to let him die. Eventually his mom killed him.

If it turned out that Terri SChiavo's brain hadnt atrophied, I would have shuddered at the nightmare that she had lived for those fourteen years.

Hmmm. Looks like I was wrong.

Sorry for the threadjack.

i'm really impressed by manzano's quotes is this article. it takes many professional athletes years to develop the ability to come off that well in an article. sounds like a nice guy.

Yes you are correct ejection fraction is measured by a percentage versus liters. Percentage of what though? Heart size and chambers can be measured by eccho cardiogram.

je

I have thought the same thing about Leo's quotes in this article and others I have read. He sounds very humble and nice.

% of the filling volume of the ventricle. EF is a measure of how well, or poorly, the heart pumps blood. it tells you how good of a pump the heart is. it can be measured by ecg. there are also velocity MR. accurate readings are done with a balloon pressure-volume catheter inserted into the subclavian vein and into the heart, but it can be done also with esophogeal doppler or by using the Fick Principle combined with CO2 rebreathing.

while it is related to, it doesn't matter about the size of the heart. in theory, and infant can have a EF that rivals lance armstrong. but since there is less blood being pumped, since the infants heart is smaller, there is less work done.

in any case, the article seems to mention only that manzano is bigger - it says nothing about the EF. it is conceivable that he could actually have a worse EF than some runners, but the size - i.e. stroke volume, compensates for it.

OK this shit is stupid. There are at least dozens (possibly hundreds? THOUSANDS?) of runners in the world better than Manzano, and few of them have had these tests done. I really doubt that he is all that special...... furthermore, why is professor asshole so impressed with 200 BPM? Many runners have higher MHRs than that.

Han, bet you can't outrun him and have you ever seen him run ? You might remember that its always better too be thought a fool than to open your mouth and confirm it. Leo is just a freshman and has already run a 3:59.86 indoor mile so I would like for you to list the thousands of runners better than him. thanks idiot boy jw