The activity I enjoyed the most during this class was the pig’s heart dissection. As a student, I, sometimes forget that the diagrams and figures in textbooks are only a close resemblance to what things actually look like. This is especially true when dealing with the human body. Diagrams are usually different colors and are embellished to in order for students to learn them more easily. At first it was a challenge to find the parts of the heart I had only previously learned via diagrams. There were many times I could not find the correct anatomy for examples the pulmonary vein and the aorta looked very similar on the real heart, so it was hard to distinguish between them. Another thing I did not realize is the strength and thickness of the heart’s wall. At the start of the dissection I was extremely cautious of how deep I cut into, but I started to realize that the heart was very thick and strong. This activity showed me that the heart is truly amazing part of the body, which the diagrams did not do justice.
One of my big triumphs during this activity was locating the coronary arteries on the pig heart. Although by just looking at the outside of the heart it is possible to see where they are, but we were able to see where they connected to the aorta and where they extend away. We were able to stick a probe and follow them. We removed some of the fatty tissue to see a clearer view of the arteries. It was amazing to see these arteries, because at that point I knew my presentation was going to be about coronary artery disease and its possible treatments.
Dr. Klepach told that class that you do not really know and understand material until you teach it to another person. I had the great pleasure to put this idea to the test with the heart dissection. We showed high school students how to dissect the pig’s heart. This was a great learning experience for me, because I was able to solidify the anatomy I already knew, and it also taught me what I had missed the first time. This was by far the most useful part of this activity for me, and the most valuable. I became a full believer in this idea, and will continue to use this strategy in my future studies.
Before this unit I knew only very basic concepts of the heart’s function and its anatomy, but after this activity and lecture my knowledge increased greatly. I am biology major with a concentration of neurobiology and I thought I wanted to go into the neuroscience field, but after this unit I am seriously considering going into the field of cardiology. This is a very challenging topic, but it can potentially be a very rewarding subject for me. There is still a lot I do not know about the cardiovascular system, but I am eager to learn much more about the heart and it’s importance to the human body.
