Coronary Arteries and Veins – Coronary Circulation (Nursing)

00:01 So, the heart itself is a very muscular tissue.

00:06 And because it is constantly working, it requires a lot of energy to do its job.

00:14 So we must have a functional blood supply to the heart itself.

00:20 This blood supply is referred to as the coronary circulation.

00:25 It is the shortest circulation in the body because it starts at the heart and ends at the heart.

00:32 It is delivered to the heart when the heart is in a relaxed state and the way this works is that the left ventricle is going to receive most of the coronary blood supply.

00:46 So in the coronary circulation, we have what's known as coronary arteries.

00:52 Both left and right coronary arteries are going to arise from the base of the aorta and they are going to supply this arterial blood or oxygenated blood directly to the heart's muscles.

01:06 It's going to encircle the heart and what's known as the coronary sulcus and the branching of these arteries is going to vary among different individuals in the population.

01:20 These arteries also contain multiple junctions or branches known as anastomoses.

01:28 These anastomoses are gonna provide additional routes for the delivery of blood.

01:36 However, if there is an occlusion or a blockage in our coronary arteries, these anastomoses are not going to be able to compensate fully for this blockage.

01:49 Out of the body's blood supply, the heart itself is going to receive 120th or about 5% of that blood.

02:02 So on the heart, we have the left coronary artery which is going to supply the interventricular septum.

02:10 It's also going to supply the anterior ventricular walls, the left atrium and the posterior wall of the left ventricle.

02:19 The left coronary artery has two branches: the anterior interventricular artery and the circumflex artery.

02:28 Because of the left side of the heart's function and role in our body, blockage of these coronary arteries are especially dangerous because the left side of the heart has to work very hard to pump blood to the rest of our bodies.

02:47 On the right side, we have the right coronary artery which is going to supply the right atrium and most of the right ventricle.

02:55 It too has two branches: the right marginal artery and the posterior interventricular artery.

03:05 Along wth arteries, we also have coronary veins.

03:10 These are gonna be cardiac veins that are going to collect the blood from the capillary beds in the heart.

03:18 The coronary sinus is then going to empty that blood into the right atrium and it is formed by the merging of all these cardiac veins.

03:29 First, we have the great cardiac vein which is found in the anterior interventricular sulcus, the middle cardiac vein which is found in the posterior interventricular sulcus, and lastly we have a small cardiac vein that's gonna be found from the inferior margin of the heart.

03:50 There are also several anterior cardiac veins that are going to empty directly into the right atrium instead of going through the coronary sinus.