In this study, the nurse experts agreed that eight risk factors increase the probability of an individual devel-oping this health condition: myocardial dysfunction, blood loss, increase in intrapericardial pressure, con-dition that leads to changes in cardiac rhythm and/or electrical conduction, deficient fluid volume, plasma loss, ineffective tissue perfusion and electrolyte imbal-ance.Thus,the purpose of this section is to identify and briefly describe the physiological processes involved in the vulnerability to develop a DCO because of the presence of these risk factors.