Heart Dissection Lab

1. The pericardium surrounds and protects the heart with a serous membrane, also releasing fluids to reduce friction.
2. Arteries are different from veins since arteries have thicker walls with more muscle and less volume while veins have thinner walls, less muscle, and more volume.
3. The auricle is a musclular pouch that increases the volume of the atrium and allows it to pump more blood through.
4. Some differences between the atria and ventricles are that the artia first receive the blood from other places in the body and are above the ventricles while the ventricles receive blood from the atria. The ventricles are also larger than the atria and have more myocardium since they have to pump blood to places outside of the heart.
5. The coronary sinus is a blood vessel that empties blood into the right atrium after receiving blood from the coronary veins. The inferior vena cava is a large vein that takes deoxygenated blood to the heart from the lower half of the body and empties into the right ventricle. The tricuspid valve is pictured as a flap between the right atrium and right ventricle.

7. The anchoring of the heart valves is so important because it ensures that the valves do not get carried away with the blood and are not a part of the backflow as well.

9. The semilunar valve prevents backflow to the heart.

10. A swelling in the feet and ankles if a valve disease occurs on the right side of the heart is because the blood is supposed to come up from the inferior vena cava which goes through the right atrium, the right side of the heart but with this disease, it means that there is a backflow because the valves are not working, causing swelling. If a valve disease occurred on the left side of the heart, there wouldn't be sufficient blood going to the muscles and body since the left side of the heart, containing the aorta, sends oxygenated blood to the rest of the body.
11. The chordae tendinae look fibrous and tendon-like and I can see them connecting to their respective valves. The valves look like flaps
11. The left and right sides of the heart have several differences. For example, the left side is bigger and has more myocardium because it pumps blood throughout the entire body, while the right side is not as muscular since it only pumps blood to the lungs

13.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B20g3GH8iX_Gdm9nRE5PbkpGSGc/view?ts=564aab47

Unit 3 Reflection

This unit was all about the circulatory system, understanding the workings of the heart and some of its accessory organs to understand more about heart diseases and how to prevent and diagnose them. The cardiovascular system is quite complex, pumping heart all throughout the body, oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. The heart has four chambers and simply put, deoxygenated blood goes in to the right atrium and through the right ventricle to the lungs where it is 'oxygenated' then goes back through the heart through the left atrium then left ventricle and out to the rest of the body. To maintain a healthy cardiovascular system, exercise, a healthy diet, and much more are needed otherwise there can be plaque buildup in the arteries of the heart that can be life-threatening. Heart disease includes many cardiovascular diesases such as heart attacks, cardia arrenst, strokes and more which are caused by the atherosclerosis of coronary arteries. However to promote cardiovascular health, people can eat foods with less LDL cholesterol and more HDL cholesterol, exercise more, and not smoke. I would like to learn more about the treatments for cardiovascular diseases and how different things affect those treatments. 

Dissection of a sheep's heart

For this unit, I felt that it was easier because I could go through the heart and its chambers and veins to truly understand the process rather than just be memorizing what is good and what is bad. However through the heart dissection I also got to learn that real world application is important, especially in subjects such as anatomy because I found that the heart that we worked with was quite different from a heart in the anatomy textbook. In the last reflection I mentioned wanting to do research on sections that I did not understand as well or remember as well and I actually did that for some of the treatments and I think it helped me understand the concepts more thoroughly. For the rest of the semester, I would like to go over what I learned in class that day for homework as well rather than just waiting to study before the test. Like that chart that we were shown in class about how well people remember things, I think that I should apply that as well.