How the Heart Works

Series Summary

Cardiology is a specialty of internal medicine dealing with disorders of the heart and blood vessels. This field includes the diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular heart disease and other heart ailments. Physicians that specialize in this field of medicine are called cardiologists, not to be confused with cardiac surgeons. In this free video series, a cardiologist provides information on heart disease, how the heart works and specialty jobs within the field of cardiology. Learn about the working conditions of pediatric cardiologists, the ways that heart disease can kill and how to live with heart disease. Find out what cardiovascular disease is, what kind of education a cardiologist needs and how heart rate monitors work in this free video series.

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Eric Frischhertz. I'm a cardiologist in Austin, Texas with CapitalCardio.com. I'm here to answer the question, how does the heart work. The heart is a pump for all the blood in the body. Arteries are the part of the heart that carries blood away from, is part of the body that carry blood away from the heart and veins are the part of the blood vessel system that carry back to the heart. Here in our model, I'll open up the heart. There are four chambers, two on the top and two on the bottom. Top chambers are called the atria, they act as a reservoir for blood. The bottom chambers are called the ventricles, and they are the actual pumps for the heart. The right sided chamber, on the patient's right, pumps blood to the lungs and the left sided chamber pumps blood through the aorta to every other part of the body besides the lungs. The blood then comes back from the entire body in to the right side of the heart is pumped through the lungs to get oxygenated, back to the left side of the heart and the oxygenated blood is then pumped to the rest of the body."