Objective 30: Understand how heart valves ensure one-way blood flow during systole and diastole

Where would we be without heart valves? My best guess would be that our heart wouldn't complete systole and diastole correctly, and our heart wouldn't be able to function. Which means a very bad day! The valves in our heart ensure one-way flow of blood, and that is very important to its function! Without these valves the blood flow would back flow into other sections of the heart that they aren't suppose to be in, for example back into the atrium from the ventricles. The textbook was a great reference, and the lecture outline was a great summary of the hearts valves. When I was looking for a good diagram to back-up the textbook's information, I referred to chapter 17 pages 587-588 which provided a diagram of the AV valves and another diagram of the semilunar valves. Each diagram shows the direction of the blood flow into the heart and the blood flow through the valves. They describe how the valves are either forced open or stay closed to make sure that the blood flows one way and does not backflow. These photos were all I needed to understand this concept and I'm glad they were apart of my textbook.