A Change of Heart

Abstract

 The essential part of the circulatory system is the heart. In other words, any organism cannot live without this organ properly functioning. The duties and mechanisms of these functions must be performed correctly or else there could be potential serious consequences to the rest of the body. When the human heart has failing left and right ventricles, then they can be replaced by a temporary Total Artificial Heart (TAH). It then becomes a critical point to make sure that this machine entering the body can perform safely and in a healthy manner that will not put the rest of the internal organs at risk for damage or failure. Through physics concepts like, observation of Ohm’s Law, pressure, flow rate, flow rate-pressure relationship, and Boyles Law; surgeons and medical experts are able to then observe, protect, and coordinate the adaptability of the temporary Total Artificial Heart with each of the individual patient’s lifestyle. Similarly, to any other kind of transplant of a foreign object into the body, there can be negative outcomes or side effects that come along, but this gives patients another option and more time. This has become another milestone within the medical world and medical history due to the fact that those who are on the verge of dying of biventricular heart failure no longer need to risk and wait to have a transplant of a real full heart but instead can choose to receive the TAH.

           Main Content

The Heart:

 As stated previously, the heart is one of the most vital organs within the human body. The reason that this muscle pumping organ is so thoroughly studied and cautiously observed is because any type of abnormality, or issue that may come up will then highly affect the entire rest of the body This organ is composed of a unique kind of muscle, referred to as a cardiac muscle. This special kind of muscle is able to perform its own rhythmic contractions and pump blood (Monster, 2017). These contractions are able to occur through the help of the heart’s sinoatrial node. This part of the heart sends out a wave of electricity to make the heart contract (Monster, 2017). The heart is also composed of various veins and arteries, and this can be shown in better detail in Figure 1.  The figure shows veins in blue and arteries in red. The veins carry deoxygenated blood cells and the arteries carry oxygenated blood cells. It is necessary to have both types of blood cells, which will be further explained later. Something that is important to understand, is studying the human heart, are the duties that it has to the human body. The hearts main job is to distribute nutrients and oxygenated blood to the other internal organs and tissues, while also removing wastes that cycles through the bloodstream (Dale, 2009). With this in mind, the heart then goes through something called the cardiac cycle. This cycle is how the blood runs through the heart and into the rest of the body. The cardiac cycle starts by deoxygenated blood coming into the right atrium, then to the right ventricle, and then into the lungs. From there the oxygen carried form the cells are delivered while releasing the waste of carbon dioxide. After that the blood then runs through the left chambers (Miranda, 2018). An additional way to understand and view the heart and the circulatory system can be viewing it is as an electrical circuit (Laurenson, 2011). A voltage-current type of behavior is considered to be similar to a pressure-flow behavior. Through physics, the voltage-current relationship is shown in Ohm’s Law, shown below.