Anatom3DWall of left ventricle
Paries ventriculi sinistri · Stěna levé komory
Muscles
Looks like
The thick muscular wall of a heart pumping chamber; the left one is about 1 cm thick, the right one much thinner.
What it does
Squeezes with each beat to push blood out: the right into the lungs, the left into the whole body.
Keeping it well
Long-standing high blood pressure thickens it; a heart attack scars it. Breathlessness and swollen ankles need a check and a heart ultrasound.
Its parts
Related conditions
- 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (DiGeorge)
- Aortic stenosis
- Atrial flutter
- Botulism
- Cardiomyopathy (dilated, restrictive, arrhythmogenic)
- Chagas disease
- Congenital heart defects
- Coronary artery disease
- Diphtheria
- Down syndrome (trisomy 21)
- Eating disorders
- Extra heartbeats (ectopics and palpitations)
- Fainting (syncope)
- Fibromyalgia
- Frailty & falls in older age
- Friedreich's ataxia
- Heart failure
- Heat exhaustion & heatstroke
- High blood pressure
- High cholesterol
- Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
- Hypothermia & frostbite
- Kawasaki disease
- Long QT syndrome
- Malnutrition & refeeding syndrome
- Metabolic syndrome
- Muscular dystrophy
- Myocarditis
- Orthostatic hypotension & POTS
- Panic disorder
- Pericardial effusion & tamponade
- Pericarditis
- Peripheral artery disease
- Phaeochromocytoma & hyperaldosteronism
- Polymyalgia rheumatica
- Pre-eclampsia
- Raynaud's phenomenon
- Rhabdomyolysis
- Sarcoma
- Sarcopenia
- Sepsis
- Shock (circulatory failure)
- Sudden cardiac arrest
- Sudden infant death syndrome
- Supraventricular tachycardia
- Takotsubo (stress) cardiomyopathy
- Tetanus
- Tuberous sclerosis complex
- Vasculitis (GCA & others)
- Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome