Library · Physiology
Systemic circulation
Make it clearer
Blood does not make a single loop through the body but two, and they are linked. One is the pulmonary circuit, which carries blood to the lungs and brings it back. The other is the systemic circuit, the subject of this card. Two linked loops: a short one through the lungs and a long one through the rest of the body.
The systemic circuit is the long one. It delivers oxygenated blood to virtually every tissue in the body and returns to the heart with relatively deoxygenated blood, that is, blood that has less oxygen and carries carbon dioxide.
What drives it is the left ventricle, one of the chambers of the heart. It pushes blood into the aorta, the main artery, and from there into its many branches, each one finer than the last, until the blood reaches the capillaries. That is where the important part happens: the exchange with the fluid that bathes the tissues, and with the body's cells.
In brief
Human circulation has two separate but connected circuits: the pulmonary and the systemic.
Two linked loops: a short one through the lungs and a long one through the rest of the body.
The systemic circuit carries oxygenated blood to nearly every tissue in the body and returns relatively deoxygenated blood and carbon dioxide to the heart.
The left ventricle pumps that oxygenated blood into the aorta and its branches, down to the capillaries, where exchange with tissue fluid and cells takes place.
Sources (1)
- OpenStax, Rice UniversityHeart Anatomy
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