How Is The Heart Supposed To Work (Electrically)?

Dr. Richard Lee answers the question: 'How Is The Heart Supposed To Work?'

ByABC News
November 20, 2008, 12:42 PM

— -- Question: How is the heart supposed to work (electrically)?

Answer :So, your heart has two different chambers. It's got upper chambers called your atrium and lower chambers called your ventricle. And the ventricle is really the workhorse that actually pumps blood through your body. And the atrium helps to empty into the ventricle and fill the ventricle.

Now each one has its own separate pathway to conduct electricity and that electricity causes it to beat. In the atrium, normally the electrical impulse that causes to jump starts in the sinus node and spreads out like a wave.

The analogy I often use for patients is if you wake up in the morning and you have a still pond and you take a rock and throw it in the center and the waves spread out, that's what sinus rhythm is. And that wave is supposed to go across the atrium until it hits the ventricle.

And then the ventricle has a special pathway that conducts much faster, kind of like an electrical court, that discharges and causes to squeeze and contract.