The Structure and Function of the Helical Heart and Its Buttress Wrapping. I. The Normal Macroscopic Structure of the Heart
2001
The Gordian knot of anatomy has been the architectural arrangement of ventricular muscle mass,
which may have finally become understood. The description of Francisco Torrent-Guasp's model of the
helical heart is presented, which includes the cardiac structures that produce 2 simple loops that start
at the pulmonary artery and end in the aorta. An unscrolled ventricular band is shown, achieved by
blunt dissection that extends between the points of origin of the right ventricle, at the pulmonary artery
root, to termination at the aortic root, in the left ventricle. These components include a spiral horizontal
basal loop that surrounds the right and left ventricular cavities, and changes direction to cause a second
spiral, produced by almost vertically oriented fibers, giving rise to the helical configuration of the
ventricular myocardial band. These anatomic structures are successively activated, as with a peristaltic
wave, starting at the right ventricle (just below the pulmonary artery) and progressing toward the aorta
to produce a sequence of narrowing, caused by the basal loop contraction, shortening (related predominantly
to the descendant segment contraction), lengthening {produced by the ascendant segment
contraction), and widening, as a consequence of several factors that act during ventricular myocardium
relaxation. These sequences control the ventricular events responsible for ejection to empty and
suction to fill. These mechanical interactions of structure and function are defined in relation to
chronologic location of the successive cardiac functional events in the aortic, left ventricular, and left
atrial recordings.
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