I’m finally getting these images of hearts up that were designed for a powerpoint presentation about normal heart anatomy and flow contrasted that of with persistent truncus arteriosus. Minus wrestling with Powerpoint over some issues, it was more exciting than it sounds. All were done in graphite/photoshop.
Normal heart, showing the internal right side
Surgical fix of truncus arteriosus heart
Flow of blood through truncus arteriosus heart
I tried rendering a few of my heart sketches on foam board – I’ve heard some fine artists get great results on this media, but they ended up being much looser than what I was going for. Not bad in and of themselves, but not great for the current project.
External view of normal heart anatomy, classic AP view
A cutaway view of the same heart
internal view of a heart with persistent ductus arteriosus
The last one is the most interesting – ductus arteriosus refers to the merged aorta and pulmonary trunk that’s present during normal heart development. Problems only arise when the heart doesn’t finish fully developing. Notable is the single great vessel feeding to both systemic circulation and pulmonary vessels, the ventricular septal defect, and the hypertrophic right ventricle, which needs to compete with the left for output. In these situations oxygenated and deoxygenated blood is mixed, the lungs are flooded, and all other circulation doesn’t get enough. There are sugeries to fix this that force the plumbing to be what they should, but unfortunately survivability in the long term isn’t great.
Happy Valentine’s Day - we have in the department an incredibly accurate heart model – it’s based on a wax mold from the real thing. Here are some quick-ish sketches.
Laeral heart model sketch
Posterior heart model drawing
Internal heart model drawing
