Heart Dissection Reflection
Structure and Function of the Body:
Heart Dissection
This assignment will describe my personal experience whilst participating in a heart dissection. It will explain the internal and external heart structure and detail the structure of blood vessels in relation to their function. This assignment will also describe what I did, saw and felt during my participation.
My first thought when the sheep’s heart was given to our group was how fatty it looked to be. At first glance, the heart seemed to be covered in a thick and creamy white Adipose tissue. We later learned that a sheep’s heart has much more fat than a human heart and that a human heart would be much leaner and a little larger.
When holding the heart, I first realised how tough the muscle felt and could easily notice that the left ventricle wall was much thicker than the right ventricle wall. This is due to the vast amount of contracting the left ventricle wall has to undertake in comparison to the smaller amount required by the right ventricle wall.
We could then see clearly that from the right ventricle, the blood would have been pumped into the pulmonary artery. This is the only artery that carries deoxygenated blood. The pulmonary artery was quite thin and rubbery and would then have split into two tubes, the left and right arteries. These arteries then carry blood to the lungs. We could not see the split in the arteries during the dissection but we did find the pulmonary valve which comprised of three semi lunar cusps. This valve prevents the backflow of blood into the right ventricle. We then discovered the two pulmonary veins, these veins carry oxygenated blood back to the left atrium. They were slim, rubbery and flexible. We were then shown the location of the atriums on the heart. I was shocked to learn how small the left and right atriums actually were. They were simply small, brown flaps of tissue. They would enlarge when filled with blood. We then discovered the huge coronary
Heart Dissection
This assignment will describe my personal experience whilst participating in a heart dissection. It will explain the internal and external heart structure and detail the structure of blood vessels in relation to their function. This assignment will also describe what I did, saw and felt during my participation.
My first thought when the sheep’s heart was given to our group was how fatty it looked to be. At first glance, the heart seemed to be covered in a thick and creamy white Adipose tissue. We later learned that a sheep’s heart has much more fat than a human heart and that a human heart would be much leaner and a little larger.
When holding the heart, I first realised how tough the muscle felt and could easily notice that the left ventricle wall was much thicker than the right ventricle wall. This is due to the vast amount of contracting the left ventricle wall has to undertake in comparison to the smaller amount required by the right ventricle wall.
We could then see clearly that from the right ventricle, the blood would have been pumped into the pulmonary artery. This is the only artery that carries deoxygenated blood. The pulmonary artery was quite thin and rubbery and would then have split into two tubes, the left and right arteries. These arteries then carry blood to the lungs. We could not see the split in the arteries during the dissection but we did find the pulmonary valve which comprised of three semi lunar cusps. This valve prevents the backflow of blood into the right ventricle. We then discovered the two pulmonary veins, these veins carry oxygenated blood back to the left atrium. They were slim, rubbery and flexible. We were then shown the location of the atriums on the heart. I was shocked to learn how small the left and right atriums actually were. They were simply small, brown flaps of tissue. They would enlarge when filled with blood. We then discovered the huge coronary