Today in my Anthropology Human Anatomy class, we explored the human heart. Here are some of my notes from class:
- walls of atria are very thin, ventricles thicker b/c have to work against gravity, blood enters here goes through pulmonary semilunar valves and through the pulmonary trunk and pulmonary arteries (right and left) to get oxygenated at the lungs
- right ventricle wall (And left) have rigids called Trabeculae carnae (bundles of myocardium)
Function: Their structure is important to their role. Had the inner surface of heart ventricles been flat, suction could occur and this would impair the heart's ability to pump efficiently (source: Google)
- papillary muscles and chordae tendinae attach to cusps of tricupsid valve (and bicupsid valve) that control where the blood goes
Function: papillary muscles contract, shorten and pull and close the valves so that the blood can be shunted where it is supposed to go and not back into the atrias
- Right and Left pulmonary veins from the lungs bring oxygenated blood back to the heart into the left atrium and to the left ventricle and out to the body through the aortas
(heart murmur: a little bit of blood goes back into the atria b/c valves are closing incorrectly)
- the heart contracts (1st!) and relaxes, pressure change, valves open and close with the help of the tendinae
Something that I found interesting was how significant the trabeculae carnae are to the rhythmic and normal pumping of the heart. If someone was born with less than average trabeculae carnae in the ventricles, would their entire body adjust to that throughout its developmental stages or would there be health complications in the individuals life? Would they have smaller than average ventricles? How affected would the circulatory system be to a more than average amount of trabeculae carnae? I wonder if there are any case studies that exhibit these kind of abnormalities.
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