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Did you give your friends valentines and little heart-shaped candies on Valentine's Day? Do you turn on the radio to hear a guy singing about his broken heart? The heart is much more than candy and songs. It is a puzzle, and it has taken man many years to try and fit the pieces together. Each year more medical technology is discovered, and more pieces are added. Over the years doctors and researchers continue to study the heart in hopes of better understanding how the pieces fit. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary the medical study of the heart and its diseases is called cardiology (Cardiology). Since the study of the heart began, remarkable technological advances have been made, and future technological advances promise an even more relentless pace of technological advances. Those who work in the field of cardiology include doctors, surgeons, and nurses. A doctor or surgeon must obtain a medical degree, and study for several years in cardiology. Nurses are required to have a degree in nursing, and usually some additional training in the study of cardiac nursing. These two groups use many skills and technology everyday to treat sick patients with heart problems. They must first diagnose the problem, and then attempt to correct the problem. Often technology plays a very important part in diagnosing and correcting the problem. In her article “The Beat goes on”, Adrienne Drapkin explains how cardiac technology began with an invention that some call the most important discovery in the history of physical diagnosis, the stethoscope. With the invention of the stethoscope, doctors began to look at and study the heart in a new light (Drapkin, para 1). This was just the first of several innovations still used today in some form or another to study and treat the heart. According to Dean Jankins the next major invention was the electrocardiogram (EKG). The electrical activity of the human heart could be recorded by the capillary electrometer without opening the chest to expose the heart (Jankins, para 4). The discoveries and inventions of technological advances continue at an extraordinary rate.
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