Location of the Heart
The heart’s main function is facilitating circulation and pumping blood. The pumping is made possible by presence of muscles. The shape of the heart, cone-shaped with a bottom that is pointed and rounded top, creates a hollow space that is filled with blood. The heart is found in the core of the chest, snuggled between the lungs and held by the blood vessels carrying blood from and to the heart.
Structure of the Heart
There are muscles dividing the heart into a left and right sides. The muscular wall is recognized as the septum, and it is solid enough to make sure that blood does not move to and from between the right and left side. The heart has four compartments, each known as the atrium and separated by walls. The bottom chambers are recognized as ventricles (Safaei et al., 2018). Each chamber has its system of pumping blood. Each half of the heart has an atrium and ventricle and blood up to down on the sides.
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The Valves
Valves are the openings that allow blood to flow from the atria to the ventricle. The valves move in one route allowing blood to flow and then closes to stop the process and ensure that blood does not flow backwards (Nagel et al., 2019). Valves are also found on large arteries responsible for blood transfer, these are aorta and pulmonary artery. They ensure that blood does not get back to the heart after it is pumped out.
Branching Blood Vessels
Blood vessels carry blood into and out of the heart. Blood starts by moving in tubes known as arteries. The arteries from the heart are thick tubes, but they later branch, forming smaller tubes. Capillaries are the smallest blood vessels, made thin to allow contact with body tissues. The thin wall allows the red blood cells to move through the capillary walls, thus delivering oxygen to the cells (Lewis, 2019). When the blood is flowing through the capillaries, it gathers wastes such as carbon dioxide from the blood cells, and then it is taken to heart using a different branching tube. When capillaries connect, they form veins. The blood circulation process is thus circular, with the arteries carried blood from the heart to different body cells with the capillaries and heart using veins.
Blood Circulation
The circulation system is a two-part process, one for bringing in blood and another for taking it out. There are two systematic loops and pulmonary cycle. The systematic loop deals with transporting oxygen to the body parts and assembling waste products of carbon dioxide. The pulmonary cycle describes the process where blood from in and out of the longs, where cleansing is done by releasing carbon dioxide and picking up more oxygen. The systemic cycle is managed by the left side, while the pulmonary cycle is controlled by the right heart side (Liang et al., 2018). Blood rich in oxygen leaves the lungs into the left chamber, and once it is full, the mitral valve opens, permitting blood to move to the left ventricle. Blood on the left side of the heart is transported by the aorta and to all parts of the body through arteries and capillaries. The vena cava veins take the blood back to the right atrium from all body parts.
Critical Thinking
Remembering and recalling circulation requires understanding the right and left heart sides, as creating a mnemonic device would be impossible. Understanding the blood circulation process is essential as it helps establish how oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged. The information related to other contexts of excretion of gases from the body.
References
Lewis, T. (2019). The Heart . Univ of California Press.
Liang, L. Q., Hui, K. Y., Hasni, M., Hazreen, N., Adib, M., & Hisham, M. A. (2018). Development of Heart Simulator (Heart-S) on the Left Ventricle for Measuring Blood Circulation during Cardiac Cycle. In Journal of Biomimetics, Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (Vol. 36, pp. 78-83). Trans Tech Publications.
Nagel, C., Marra, A. M., Benjamin, N., Blank, N., Cittadini, A., Coghlan, G., ... & Fischer, C. (2019). Reduced Right Ventricular Output Reserve in Patients With Systemic Sclerosis and Mildly Elevated Pulmonary Artery Pressure. Arthritis & Rheumatology , 71 (5), 805-816.
Safaei, S., Blanco, P. J., Müller, L. O., Hellevik, L. R., & Hunter, P. J. (2018). Bond graph model of cerebral circulation: toward clinically feasible systemic blood flow simulations. Frontiers in physiology , 9 , 148.
