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MEDICAL ANIMATION TRANSCRIPT: Your heart is an extraordinary machine. During your lifetime, your hearts muscular walls pump blood into blood vessels branching throughout your body. Your heart has four chambers. Two upper chambers, called the left and right atria, and two lower chambers, called the left and right ventricles, contract in a steady rhythm known as your heartbeat. During a normal heartbeat, blood from your tissues and lungs flows into your atria, then into your ventricles. Walls inside your heart, called the interatrial and interventricular septa, help keep the blood on left and right sides from mixing. Two valves sit like doors between your atria and ventricles to prevent blood from flowing backward into your atria. The tricuspid valve opens into your right ventricle, and the bicuspid valve, also known as the mitral valve, opens into your left ventricle. Strong, thin tissues called chordae tendinae hold your valves in place during the forceful contractions of your ventricles. Blood leaving the ventricles passes through another set of valves: the pulmonary valve, between your right ventricle and pulmonary trunk, and the aortic valve, connecting your left ventricle and aorta. In order to pump blood more efficiently, your heart muscle, called myocardium, is arranged in a unique pattern. Three layers of myocardium wrap around the lower part of your heart. They twist and tighten in different directions to push blood through your heart. When special cells, called pacemaker cells, generate electrical signals inside your heart, the heart muscle cells, called myocytes, contract as a group. Your heart is divided into left and right halves, which work together like a dual pump. On the right side of your heart, deoxygenated blood from your bodys tissues flows through large veins, called the superior and inferior vena cava, into your right atrium. Next, the blood moves into your right ventricle, which contracts and sends blood out of your heart to your lungs to gather oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide. On the left side of your heart, oxygen-rich blood from your lungs flows through your pulmonary veins into your left atrium. The blood then moves into your left ventricle, which contracts and sends blood out of your heart through the aorta to feed your cells and tissues. The first branches off your aorta are the coronary arteries, which supply your heart muscle with oxygen and nutrients. At the top of your aorta, arteries branch off to carry blood to your head and arms. Arteries branching from the middle and lower parts of your aorta supply blood to the rest of your body. Your heart beats an average of sixty to one hundred beats per minute. In that one minute, your heart pumps about five quarts of blood through your arteries, delivering a steady stream of oxygen and nutrients all over your body.
"I would like to thank all of you at Medical Legal Art for all the
assistance you provided. It was a result of the excellent, timely work
that we were able to conclude the case successfully.
I feel very confident that our paths will cross again."
Fritz G. Faerber
Faerber & Anderson, P.C.
St. Louis, MO
"Our firm was able to settle our case at an all day mediation yesterday and
I am confident that the detail and overall appearance of the medical
illustrations significantly contributed to the settlement. When we require
medical illustrations in the future, I will be sure to contact [MLA]."
Noel Turner, III
Burts, Turner, Rhodes & Thompson
Spartanburg, SC
"Medical illustrations are essential evidence in personal injury litigation and MLA is simply the best I've found at producing high-quality illustrations. Your illustrators are not only first-class artists, but creative and responsive. Your turn around time is as good as it gets. My clients have won over $60 million in jury verdicts and I can't recall a case which did not include one of your exhibits. On behalf of those clients, thanks and keep up the great work!"
"This past year, your company prepared three medical illustrations for our cases; two in which we received six figure awards; one in which we received a substantial seven figure award. I believe in large part, the amounts obtained were due to the vivid illustrations of my clients' injuries and the impact on the finder of fact."
Donald W. Marcari Marcari Russotto & Spencer, P.C. Chesapeake, VA
Medical Legal Art creates medical demonstrative evidence (medical
illustrations, drawings, pictures, graphics, charts, medical animations,
anatomical models, and interactive presentations) for use during legal
proceedings, including research, demand letters, client conferences,
depositions, arbitrations, mediations, settlement conferences, mock jury
trials and for use in the courtroom. We do not provide legal or medical
advice. If you have legal questions, you should find a lawyer with whom you
can discuss your case issues. If you have medical questions, you should seek the advice of a healthcare provider.