Your veins carry blood to your heart. Your arteries carry it away from your heart. This is an important distinction for understanding how a Yaz pulmonary embolism occurs.
Your veins carry blood to your heart. Your arteries carry it away from your heart. This is an important distinction for understanding how a Yaz pulmonary embolism occurs. The condition is defined as a blockage in the pulmonary arteries, the blood vessels that deliver blood to your lungs. But the emboli that create these blockages rarely form there. Instead, they arrive from other areas throughout your circulatory system.
Origins Of A Pulmonary Embolism
Yaz PE problems are usually caused by blood clots that originate in the deep veins of your legs. This is a dangerous condition called deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Depending on its severity, it may be considered a medical emergency.
Clots can form within your leg veins for a variety of reasons, including major surgery, insufficient mobility, and inherited clotting disorders. They can also develop as a result of the hormones used in Yaz birth control: estrogen and drospirenone. These hormones are known to increase the likelihood of abnormal clots.
As long as blood clots remain attached to the lining of the vein, the problems they cause are limited to poor circulation and venous valve damage (i.e. post-thrombotic syndrome). If they break away, however, they can travel with your bloodstream to your lungs and cause a pulmonary embolism.
The Path From The Legs To The Lungs
Clots in the legs can form within the deep veins of the calves or thighs. If they form in the calves and break free of the venous wall, they will migrate through the popliteal vein in the affected leg. This vein extends upward through your thigh and drains into the femoral vein. Clots that form in your thighs and break free from the lining can migrate through the femoral vein toward the inferior vena cava.
The inferior vena cava is a large blood vessel into which drain the major veins of your lower extremities. It delivers oxygen-poor blood to the right side of your heart. Blood clots that have embolized (i.e. broken away from the venous wall) can migrate through the vena cava and into your heart’s right atrium.
Blood enters your right atrium and flows into the right ventricle (the chamber beneath the atrium) before moving into the pulmonary arteries. An embolus that travels along this same route will migrate down a pulmonary artery until it reaches a point where it forms a blockage. There, it will prevent blood from reaching the lung tissue supplied by the artery. This triggers a pulmonary embolism.
Side Effects Of A Yaz PE
Immediate side effects vary and can include chest pain, a bloody cough, shortness of breath, and an irregular heart rhythm. These are due to a number of factors. First, your heart is forced to work harder to deliver blood to your lungs. Second, the affected lung tissue becomes unable to oxygenate your blood, making less oxygen available to the rest of your body. Third, blood pressure rises in your lungs due to the blockage.
A Yaz blood clot in the lung can also cause several long-term health complications, especially if the condition is left untreated for a prolonged period. For example, because your heart is forced to work harder than normal to pump blood to your lungs, it can eventually wear itself out. You may suffer a cardiac arrest.
Also, if a PE disrupts your heart’s electrical system and causes an arrhythmia, you may experience persistent weakness, lightheadedness, and chest pain. Moreover, if the arrhythmia affects the left side of your heart, it can cause blood to pool and clot. This exposes you to a potential stroke if a clot leaves your heart and moves into the aorta.
Pulmonary hypertension, pleural effusion, and pulmonary infarction (i.e. death of the lung tissue) may also occur.
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David Whitney is the author of this article on Yaz Lawsuit Gallbladder.
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