{"id":164,"date":"2013-02-25T10:49:45","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T15:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/?p=164"},"modified":"2015-02-25T10:57:15","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T15:57:15","slug":"michaela-swiatek-pig-heart-dissection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/2013\/02\/25\/michaela-swiatek-pig-heart-dissection\/","title":{"rendered":"Michaela Swiatek: Pig Heart Dissection"},"content":{"rendered":"
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During our dissection of a pig’s heart in lab, our class learned a great deal while doing this hands-on activity.\u00a0 Most students were able to dissect their own heart, and several students shared a heart.\u00a0 The first incision we made was\u00a0 along the right side of the heart.\u00a0 The right ventricle we identified by squeezing the heart.\u00a0 We were able to do this because\u00a0 the myocardium on the right side is much less rigid than that of the left ventricle.\u00a0 This incision allowed us to see the tricuspid valve and the right ventricular outflow tract which includes the pulmonary valve.<\/div>\n

Our second incision was into the right ventricle, which had to be cut open from the apex of the heart towards the top.<\/p>\n

The next incision was into the tricuspid valve, which allows blood to flow from the right atrium into the right ventricle when the heart is relaxed during diastole.\u00a0 I learned that when the heart begins to contract the heart centers a phase called systole, and the atrium pushes blood into the ventricle.\u00a0 Then, the ventricle begins to contract and blood pressure exceeds the pressure in the atrium, the tricuspid valve snaps shut.<\/p>\n

I was surprised to learn that a pig\u2019s heart is very similar to the human heart in anatomy, size and function.\u00a0 In fact, its excellent availability in most areas of the world, along with the similarities to the human heart, make porcine heart tissue ideal for transplant into receipt\u2019s body, in the same way that a human\u2019s donated organ would be rejected.\u00a0 To prevent this, porcine heart valves are treated with glutaraldehyde to reduce their immunogenicity.<\/p>\n

\u2022I already knew that the muscle of your muscle is called the myocardium.\u00a0 Most of the myocardium is located in the ventricles which are roughly the size of your fist.\u00a0 The porcine heart, like a human heart, has four chambers and four valves.\u00a0 Blood flows through the pig heart in the same manner as through a human\u2019s.\u00a0 This picture show\u2019s the pig heart from the front, with the portion on the right of the picture being the left side of the heart vice versa. The aorta is clearly visible at the top, with the atrium on either side, while the ventricles are in the bottom left.<\/div>\n
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\u2022Last, when the heart is contracting during systole, the pulmonary valve is open because the blood pushes the cusps out of the way.\u00a0 Furthermore, at the end of the systole, the ventricles begin to relax and intra-ventricular pressure drops.\u00a0 When the ventricular pressure drops to below the pulmonary artery pressure, the pulmonary valve closes and prevent back-flow of blood into the ventricle.<\/div>\n
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\u2022I was surprised to learn that a pig\u2019s heart is very similar to the human heart in anatomy, size and function.\u00a0 In fact, its excellent availability in most areas of the world, along with the similarities to the human heart, make porcine heart tissue ideal for transplant into body\u2019s receipt body, in the same way that a human\u2019s donated organ would be rejected.\u00a0 To prevent this, porcine valves are treated with glutaraldehyde to reduce their immunogenicity.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u2022I already knew that the muscle of your heart is called the myocardium.\u00a0 Most of the myocardium is locate in the ventricles which are roughly the size of your\u00a0 fist.\u00a0 The porcine heart, like a human heart, has four chambers and four valves.\u00a0 Blood flows through the pig heart in the same manner as through a human\u2019s.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During our dissection of a pig’s heart in lab, our class learned a great deal while doing this hands-on activity.\u00a0 Most students were able to dissect their own heart, and several students shared a heart.\u00a0 The first incision we made was\u00a0 along the right side of the heart.\u00a0 The right ventricle we identified by squeezing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145218],"tags":[13227,145275,145272],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}