Corkscrew Eddies And Donuts Key To A Healthy Heart

Donuts aren't sometimes terribly high on the list once talking concerning healthy hearts, however it seems that they could be important to correct coronary blood flow – a minimum of in terms of their form. Researchers from Johns Hopkins drugs have recently found that the pattern blood takes whereas flowing through the heart's higher chamber may be a key indicator of blood formation and resulting stroke risk.

In their study, the researchers conducted CT scans of 2 hearts: one healthy and one that was enlarged because of heart condition. They then fed the data they gleaned into a series of laptop visualizations and created videos of the blood's fluid motion within the heart's left atrium of the heart wherever it enters from the pneumonic veins and passes into the lower-left chamber called the ventricle.

They discovered that within the healthy heart, blood forms "eddies" that area unit formed like corkscrews and resolve into vortices formed like doughnuts. within the unhealthy heart, however, the blood did not come along into these formations and instead was falling in sheet-like patterns by the time it reached very cheap of the atrium. this will cause the blood to pool and kind clots which might cause strokes if they visit the brain.

"As the blood comes to bear with the atrium's surface, it slows down because of cutting forces almost like friction, and this seems to stop the blood from exiting the chamber as swimmingly because it would possibly," says Hiroshi Ashikaga, M.D., Ph.D., professor of drugs and member of the guts and tube-shaped structure Institute at the Johns Hopkins University faculty of drugs and one in every of the study authors. "The slower the blood moves and therefore the a lot of contact it's with the atrium, the a lot of risk there's for a clot to make."

The researchers believe this discovery will facilitate them higher assess stroke risk and that they area unit currently conducting a long-run study with a lot of participants to feature to their body of data.

"By observing blood flow through the atrium, we predict we are able to accurately assess stroke risk higher than such risk factors as heart size and pumping strength," says Ashikaga. "Our study fills during a missing diagnostic link between heart perform and fluid motion in our understanding of however every will have an effect on stroke risk."

You can see simulations of blood flow through a healthy heart here and thru a unhealthy heart here.