Taking a blood pressure. .

Blood Pressure Cuff

The main purpose of taking a blood pressure is to measure of the pressure exerting the blood circulating on the walls of the bodies arteries. This helps nurses and doctors detect any possibly abnormal changes in valves. The procedure you go through when you do this is apply the round cold part of the stethoscope under your BF cuff placed just above the crease in the middle of the arm, usually in good alignment with the heart. When this is in proper place, you use the sphygmomanometer (pump) and air it up to around 180 depending on what age of person you are dealing with. When you get up to this, you slowly deflate the cuff and when you hear the first "lub-dub" this is the first detected heart beat and when it stops this will give you your diastolic and systolic pressure. A pretty normal BP is around 70-120. Anything lower should be reported to check for possible problems.

HEART DISSECTIONS

Pig Heart

The first dissection we did was Pig Heart dissection. This was the littlest heart that we had to deal with during this dissection. Measurements got no more than 10 cm. We had cut the heart exactly like this picture shows and inside we got a good look at all insides. It went to show that the pigs heart ventricles were way littler compared to the other two animal hearts we looked at. I learned that on each side, the organs on the left and right, were a little different sized instead of the exact same.

Cow Heart

This was the largest heart that we had seen during the dissection and had the biggest parts to it. The measurements of the ventricles were a lot bigger than the others. So they were the easier to spot and measure than in the pig. This one was cut down the middle like others.  With the other two parts the ventricles were close to 3 cm on average. The cows heart was 12 cm and the right ventricle was 13 cm.

Sheep Heart

When we dissected the sheep heart, it was a middle sized heart and so the organs on the inside were easier to see compared to the pigs heart. My group thought it would be easier to find all the ventricles and atriums etc. if we cut the heart down the middle. As you can see above, these are some of the parts we were looking for inside of the sheep heart.  They were a lot easier to find than in the pig. A main difference I saw was a very different color difference. The measurements in this were smaller than in the pigs.

Conclusion: After looking at all these hearts, the differences I saw was the size of all the hearts, color, and the shapes they came in. The major difference I saw in the heart specimens are all very similar to each other except for the sizes vary.