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Venous return (VR) is the flow of blood back to the heart. Under steady-state conditions, venous return must equal cardiac output (Q), when averaged over time because the cardiovascular system is essentially a closed loop. Otherwise, blood would accumulate in either the systemic or pulmonary circulations.
These include the great cardiac vein, the middle cardiac vein, the small cardiac vein, the smallest cardiac veins, and the anterior cardiac veins. Cardiac veins carry blood with a poor level of oxygen, from the myocardium to the right atrium. Most of the blood of the coronary veins returns through the coronary sinus.
Most veins carry deoxygenated blood from the tissues back to the heart; exceptions are those of the pulmonary and fetal circulations which carry oxygenated blood to the heart. In the systemic circulation, arteries carry oxygenated blood away from the heart, and veins return deoxygenated blood to the heart, in the deep veins. [1]
Though veins might make it appear as such, human blood is never naturally blue. [3] The blue appearance of surface veins is caused mostly by the scattering of blue light away from the outside of venous tissue if the vein is at 0.5 mm deep or more. Veins and arteries appear similar when skin is removed and are seen directly. [4] [5]
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.
The capillaries connect to venules, and the blood then travels back through the network of veins to the venae cavae into the right heart. The micro-circulation — the arterioles, capillaries, and venules —constitutes most of the area of the vascular system and is the site of the transfer of O 2 , glucose , and enzyme substrates into the cells.
The left atrium receives oxygenated blood back from the lungs via one of the four pulmonary veins. The left atrium has an outpouching called the left atrial appendage. Like the right atrium, the left atrium is lined by pectinate muscles. [25] The left atrium is connected to the left ventricle by the mitral valve. [8]
The systemic circulation is a circuit loop that delivers oxygenated blood from the left heart to the rest of the body, and returns deoxygenated blood back to the right heart via large veins known as the venae cavae. The systemic circulation can also be defined as two parts – a macrocirculation and a microcirculation.