Week 2: Evaluation of "Physiology" Article

Upon reading the entitled article "Physiology" on Wikipedia, I noticed that many of the statements were not backed by reliable sources or citations. Throughout the article, homeostasis is briefly mentioned yet it is such a central component of physiology that I feel there should be a component of the article titled "Homeostasis" to emphasize this point. Additionally, I noticed that many of the different subsections within the broad physiology umbrella were simply listed instead of their being a sentence or two to briefly describe them so that the reader gets a broad understanding of the sheer vastness of the subject of physiology. Even a sentence or two describing each of the subsections will provide more legitimacy to the article so that the reader can first be exposed to each of the subtopics, and then click on each individual article if they are interested in that article. Overall, I felt as though the physiology article itself was very broad and while most information was cited and accounted for, there could be improvements made regarding both citations and available information about this topic.

Week 4: Choose your topic/Find your sources

For my article, I have chosen to research a concept called "Supraventricular extrasystole". Editing this particular article is a little daunting because of the very minimal information available on the Wikipedia page, but I feel like this is also a great opportunity to provide valuable information to the research because there is so little on this topic. It is currently classified as a "Stub" article, so expanding upon it is ideal in order for everyone to get a better sense of what it is. I'd like to add as much as possible to this article- Etiology, Treatment, Prognosis, etc. Since it was suggested that this article be merged with "Premature atrial contraction" article, I plan to look further into the interrelationship between these two diagnoses and identify how to classify and expand the two.

Week 5: Draft your article

It is important to be able to differentiate between ventricular extrasystole and supraventricular extrasystole. "Extrasystole" is a very fancy word for "premature ventricular contraction". In a normal heart, the atria get activated by the sinus nodes. In patients that are experiencing extrasystoles, these particular beats of the heart originate not from the sinus nodes but from mostly the atria of the heart.

Prognosis

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Patients who experience an increased amount of supraventricular extrasystoles combined with the presence of supraventricular tachycardias depict a greater incidence of atrial fibrillation, a condition characterized by rapid, irregular beating of the heart muscle[1]. Atrial fibrillation is most common in patients over the age of 70 years old and, according to recent research is characterized as a precursor to stroke [2].

Treatment

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Diagnosis

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  1. ^ Johnson, Linda S. B.; Juhlin, Tord; Juul-Möller, Steen; Hedblad, Bo; Nilsson, Peter M.; Engström, Gunnar (2015-09-01). "A prospective study of supraventricular activity and incidence of atrial fibrillation". Heart Rhythm. Focus Issue: Atrial Fibrillation. 12 (9): 1898–1904. doi:10.1016/j.hrthm.2015.04.042. PMID 25956964.
  2. ^ Wolf, Philip (1991). "Atrial fibrillation as an independent risk factor for stroke: the Framingham Study" (PDF). Stroke. 22 (8): 983–988. doi:10.1161/01.str.22.8.983. PMID 1866765. Retrieved 2/13/2017. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |access-date= (help)