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The heart is a muscular organ that pumps blood through the circulatory system. In humans and other mammals, the heart has four chambers: two upper atria and two lower ventricles. The heart receives deoxygenated blood from the body in the right atrium, pumps it to the lungs via the pulmonary circulation to receive oxygen, then returns the oxygenated blood to the left atrium to pump it back out to the body through the aorta. The heart beats regularly through electrical signals generated by pacemaker cells in the sinoatrial node that cause the heart to contract.

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39 views2 pages

Heart: Jump To Navigation Jump To Search

The heart is a muscular organ that pumps blood through the circulatory system. In humans and other mammals, the heart has four chambers: two upper atria and two lower ventricles. The heart receives deoxygenated blood from the body in the right atrium, pumps it to the lungs via the pulmonary circulation to receive oxygen, then returns the oxygenated blood to the left atrium to pump it back out to the body through the aorta. The heart beats regularly through electrical signals generated by pacemaker cells in the sinoatrial node that cause the heart to contract.

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ANMOL
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Heart

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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This article is about the internal organ. For other uses, see Heart (disambiguation).
"Cardiac" redirects here. For the comics character, see Cardiac (comics).

Heart

The human heart

Details

System Circulatory

Artery Aorta,[a] pulmonary trunk and right and left pulmonary


arteries,[b] right coronary artery, left main coronary artery[c]

Vein Superior vena cava, inferior vena cava,[d] right and

left pulmonary veins,[e] great cardiac vein, middle cardiac

vein, small cardiac vein, anterior cardiac veins[f]

Nerve Accelerans nerve, vagus nerve

Identifiers

Latin cor

Greek kardía (καρδία)


MeSH D006321

TA A12.1.00.001

Anatomical terminology

[edit on Wikidata]

The heart is a muscular organ in most animals, which pumps blood through


the blood vessels of the circulatory system.[1] The pumped blood
carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such
as carbon dioxide to the lungs.[2] In humans, the heart is approximately the size of a
closed fist and is located between the lungs, in the middle compartment of the chest.
[3]

In humans, other mammals, and birds, the heart is divided into four chambers: upper
left and right atria and lower left and right ventricles.[4][5] Commonly the right atrium
and ventricle are referred together as the right heart and their left counterparts as
the left heart.[6] Fish, in contrast, have two chambers, an atrium and a ventricle, while
reptiles have three chambers.[5] In a healthy heart blood flows one way through the
heart due to heart valves, which prevent backflow.[3] The heart is enclosed in a
protective sac, the pericardium, which also contains a small amount of fluid. The wall
of the heart is made up of three layers: epicardium, myocardium, and endocardium.[7]
The heart pumps blood with a rhythm determined by a group of pacemaking cells in
the sinoatrial node. These generate a current that causes contraction of the heart,
traveling through the atrioventricular node and along the conduction system of the
heart. The heart receives blood low in oxygen from the systemic circulation, which
enters the right atrium from the superior and inferior venae cavae and passes to the
right ventricle. From here it is pumped into the pulmonary circulation, through
the lungs where it receives oxygen and gives off carbon dioxide. Oxygenated blood
then returns to the left atrium, passes through the left ventricle and is pumped out
through the aorta to the systemic circulation−where the oxygen is used
and metabolized to carbon dioxide.[8] The heart beats at a resting rate close to 72
beats per minute.[9] Exercise temporarily increases the rate, but lowers resting heart
rate in the long term, and is good for heart health.[10]

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