|
|
Muscle tissue, known as myocardium or cardiac muscle, wraps around a scaffolding of tough connective tissue to form the walls of the heart’s chambers. The atria, the receiving chambers of the heart, have relatively thin walls compared to the ventricles, the pumping chambers. The left ventricle has the thickest walls—nearly 1 cm (0.5 in) thick in an adult—because it must work the hardest to propel blood to the farthest reaches of the body.
What is the myocardium?
The myocardium (mi"o-KAR'de-um) is the heart's muscular wall. It contracts to pump blood out of the heart, then relaxes as the heart refills with returning blood. Its outer surface is called the epicardium (ep"ih-KAR'de-um). Its inner lining is the endocardium (en"do-KAR'de-um).
HISTORY OF HOSPITALS:
Today the United States is home to 6,021 hospitals that contain over 1 million hospital beds. U.S.hospitals annually admit some 34 million patients who are assigned a bed and receive medical or surgical treatment as inpatients. Hospitals also provide outpatient treatment in clinics or other walk-in, or ambulatory, settings for an additional 483 million patients every year.
Hospitals in the United States are classified by the services they provide (general or specialized), the length of stay they offer patients (short stay or long-term care), and by their ownership (not-for-profit, proprietary, or government owned). Although most U.S. hospitals are classified as not-for-profit, any one hospital will fall into several of the above categories. For example, Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, with more than 300,000 sq m (3 million sq ft) of space, is one of the largest short-stay, not-for-profit, general hospitals in the country.
>>
HISTORY OF HOSPITALS
