Anatomical Correlation of the Helical Structure of the Ventricular Myocardium Through Echocardiography

Helical structure of the ventricular myocardium. A narrative review of cardiac mechanics

To date, the ventricular myocardial band is the anatomical-functional model that best explains cardiac mechanics during systolic-diastolic phenomena in the cardiac cycle. The implications of the model fundamentally affect the anatomical interpretation of the ventricular myocardium, giving meaning to the direction that muscle fibers take, turning them into an object of study with potential clinical, imaging, and surgical applications. Re-interpreting the anatomy of the ventricular muscle justifies changes in the physiological interpretation, from its functional focus as a fiber unraveling the mechanical phenomena carried out during systole and diastole. We identify the functioning of the heart from the electrical and hemodynamic point of view, but it is necessary to delve into the mechanics that originate the hemodynamic changes observed flowmetrically, and that manifested during the pathology. In this review, the mechanical phenomena that the myocardium performs in each phase of the cardiac cycle are broken down in detail, emphasizing the physical displacements that each of the muscle segments presents, as well as a vision of their alteration and in which pathologies they are mainly identified. Visually, an anatomical correlation to the echocardiogram is provided, pointing out the direction of the segmental myocardial displacement by the strain velocity vector technique.

How are the cardiomyocytes aggregated together within the walls of the left ventricular cone?

The manner of packing together of the cardiomyocytes within the walls of the cardiac ventricles has now been investigated for over half a millennium. In 1669, Lower dissected the ventricular mass, likening the arrangement to skeletal musculature, in the form of a myocardial band extending between the right and left atrioventricular junctions. Pettigrew subsequently showed obvious helical arrangements to be evident within the ventricular walls, but emphasised that the cardiomyocytes were attached to each other, and could not justifiably be compared with skeletal cardiomyocytes. Torrent-Guasp then reactivated the notion that the ventricular mass was formed of a solitary band. Unlike Lower, he dissected the band as extending between the pulmonary to the aortic roots. Multiple investigations conducted using gross dissection and histology, and more recently diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomographic analysis, have shown an absence of any anatomical boundaries within the walls that might permit the mass uniformly to be dissected so as to reveal the band. A response to a recent letter to the Journal, nonetheless, claimed that the dissections had been validated by clinicians interpreting the findings so as to provide an explanation for ventricular cardiodynamics, arguing that the findings provided a suitable anatomical model for this purpose. Anatomical models, however, are of no value unless they are anatomically correct. In this review, therefore, we summarise the evidence showing that the cardiomyocytes making up the ventricular walls, rather than forming a ventricular myocardial band, are instead aggregated together to form a three-dimensional myocardial mesh.