Cut by cut: extensibility of the heart walls

As we all know, only what goes in goes out: how flexible the heart walls are is therefore also crucial for the heart's pumping function. A working group from the Institute of Physiology II at the Medical Faculty of the University of Münster has been able to show for the first time which structural elements influence this flexibility and to what extent. The study has now been published in the renowned journal Nature Cardiovascular Research. Basically, the heart works like any other pump: during diastole it relaxes and fills with blood, during systole it contracts and pumps the vital fluid into the body's circulation. -The elasticity of the heart walls is important here. The amount of blood that flows into the heart during diastole is also pushed out again and supplies our circulation with oxygen, among other things," explains Prof. Wolfgang Linke, who heads the working group. Better distensibility therefore means higher volume and this in turn means more blood.