Cardiovascular

     Over the last few week in our anatomy class we have been studing a lot about the cardiovascular system, to help us better understand how it all works. We have been doing a few labs to help us out.

Our first lab was the dissection of the cow, pig, and sheep heart.  My group dissected the pig heart. We were looking for things such as the ventricles, aorta, atriums, outer walls, and the pulmonary trunk.I not only got to see what the internal heart looked like, but it also helped me to learn how to locate the different parts of the heart. We measured each part of the heart, in order for us to compare the difference in sizes, we found out that the cow heart was the biggest out of the three.

This is a graph of the parts we had measured

We also did an EKG lab, by analizing our own hearts. This is the graphical recording of the electrical events occurring within the heart.  This allowed us to learn how to distinguish a "normal" heart rate from a "abnormal heart beat".

Before we studied this I had no idea what this ment but now i know the difference between a good heart and a bad heart.

Here is an example of a bad heart rate beacuse the Q, R, S is missing. This would be something that you would definitely need to recognize an abnormal heart which can be life threatening.

We also checked each others heart rate and we did it so it would be backwards. This is an examle of what it looked like backwards and right on the computer.



We also learned how to use a stethoscope with the sphygmomanometer to take blood pressure.  This showed the advancement of technology and how easy it is for us to listen to someones heart to make sure that everything is running correctly.  The normal blood pressure is 120/80, although women often tend to have a lower blood pressure than men.

 Me and Jill were partners and it was so hard to use a stethiscope to figure out our blood pressure. We couldn't find the heart beat at all, and my arm became so numb because it took so long.

Then we used the sphygmomanometer and at first mine still wouldn't work, and we thought somethingwas wrong with me. But we then tried it again and it worked perfect. I can't remember what my blood pressure was but it was close to normal. Jill then tried it and her blood pressure was not even close to being normal. So we tried it again and it was normal.

We also watched a video about a doctor cutting part of the heart off to help them. While he was doing this the heart beat was still beating while he was doing the surgry. I thought whoa this is crazy. He had no idea if it works. Now some doctors here in the US are doing the same procedure, but advancing it. I think this will be our future to fix our hearts if they advance it enough