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[1] [2] It includes the cardiovascular system, or vascular system, that consists of the heart and blood vessels (from Greek kardia meaning heart, and from Latin vascula meaning vessels). The circulatory system has two divisions, a systemic circulation or circuit , and a pulmonary circulation or circuit . [ 3 ]
When blood pressure is increased in the blood vessels and the blood vessels distend, they react with a constriction; this is the Bayliss effect. Stretch of the muscle membrane opens a stretch-activated ion channel. The cells then become depolarized and this results in a Ca 2+ signal and triggers muscle contraction. No action potential is ...
Cardiac physiology or heart function is the study of healthy, unimpaired function of the heart: involving blood flow; myocardium structure; the electrical conduction system of the heart; the cardiac cycle and cardiac output and how these interact and depend on one another.
They give rise to medium-sized vessels known as distributing arteries (or muscular arteries). The pulmonary arteries, the aorta, and its branches together comprise the body's system of elastic arteries. Other examples include the brachiocephalic artery, common carotid arteries, subclavian artery, and common iliac artery.
Substances called vasoconstrictors can reduce the size of blood vessels, thereby increasing blood pressure. Vasodilators (such as nitroglycerin) increase the size of blood vessels, thereby decreasing arterial pressure. If the blood viscosity increases (gets thicker), the result is an increase in arterial pressure.
For example, as tissue metabolism increases, driving up oxygen demand, the amount of available oxygen decreases, driving down the pH and triggering a release in adenosine, which triggers the blood vessel to vasodilate. Myogenic control, which originates from the wall of the blood vessel itself and consists of both muscle reflexes and products ...
The heart is a muscular organ situated in the mediastinum.It consists of four chambers, four valves, two main arteries (the coronary arteries), and the conduction system. The left and right sides of the heart have different functions: the right side receives de-oxygenated blood through the superior and inferior venae cavae and pumps blood to the lungs through the pulmonary artery, and the left ...
The conduction system consists of specialized heart muscle cells, situated within the myocardium. [3] There is a skeleton of fibrous tissue that surrounds the conduction system which can be seen on an ECG. Dysfunction of the conduction system can cause irregular heart rhythms including rhythms that are too fast or too slow.