Cardiovascular
Blood pressure, heart failure, rhythm — the drugs that keep the pump running.
Foundations
How blood pressure, the RAAS, and the heart's electrical system set up every cardiovascular drug.
Diuretics
The water pills — where in the kidney each diuretic works, and what it does to your salts.
Hypertension
The silent pressure — why it matters and how each drug class lowers it.
Heart Failure
When the pump weakens — the drugs that ease the load and buy time.
Ischemic Heart Disease
The starving heart — nitrates and antianginals for angina, and the drugs of a heart attack.
Arrhythmias
When the rhythm goes wrong — the Vaughan-Williams classes and atrial fibrillation.
Antithrombotics
Blood thinners — antiplatelets, heparins, warfarin, the DOACs, and clot-busters.
Lipid-Lowering
Cholesterol control — statins and every non-statin drug that lowers your lipids.
Shock & Circulatory Support
When the circulation fails — the vasopressors and inotropes that keep pressure up.
Specialized Vascular
Beyond the basics — pulmonary hypertension and peripheral vascular drugs.
Emergencies & Special Topics
Angioedema, cardiovascular drugs in pregnancy, and the drugs of cardiac arrest (ACLS).
How Blood Pressure Is Controlled: Cardiac Output, Resistance & the Levers Drugs Pull
Every blood-pressure pill ever made pulls on one of just two levers — how hard the heart pumps, or how tight the vessels squeeze. Master a single equation and the entire cardiovascular pharmacy suddenly makes sense: you'll know why a water pill, a beta blocker, and a vessel-relaxer all lower the same number by completely different routes. This is the master map for everything that follows.
The Renin–Angiotensin–Aldosterone System (RAAS): The Body's Pressure Thermostat
Why does a common blood-pressure pill give some people a nagging dry cough? The answer is a single hormone cascade that the body uses to defend its blood pressure — and that four of the most important drug classes in medicine are built to block. Follow the chain from kidney to blood vessel and you'll understand hypertension, heart failure, and kidney protection all at once.
The Cardiac Action Potential, Pacemakers & the ECG
That steady beep on a hospital monitor is the sound of an electrical wave sweeping through the heart, sixty times a minute, for a lifetime. Understand the ion channels that make that wave — and the natural pacemaker that fires it — and every anti-arrhythmic drug becomes obvious: each one simply blocks one of those channels. This is the wiring diagram behind the entire rhythm section.
Loop & Thiazide Diuretics: Where the Kidney Loses Salt & Water
A patient is drowning — not in a lake, but in their own fluid, lungs filling as a failing heart backs blood up. One injection makes them pour litres of urine and, within the hour, breathe easily again. That's the raw power of a loop diuretic. Its gentler cousin, the thiazide, is the world's most-prescribed blood-pressure pill. Same idea — block salt reabsorption in the kidney — but at different spots, with opposite effects on your calcium.
Potassium-Sparing, Osmotic & Carbonic-Anhydrase Diuretics
Loops and thiazides have one nagging flaw: they flush away potassium. The fix is a class of diuretics that does the opposite — it holds potassium in. One of them also, surprisingly, treats acne and grows breasts on men; another shrinks a swollen brain; a third stops mountain sickness. Three small classes, each with a party trick that reveals exactly where and how it works on the kidney.
