The exercises in this laboratory are not designed to introduce new material but to enhance your understanding of the pumping function of the heart. The approach used employs the concept of a pressure-volume loop to assess cardiac function under a variety of conditions  If you are not already familiar with this concept, you may want to refer to the development of this subject in Cardiovascular Physiology: Core Concepts.

The figure in the frame to the right depicts changes in pressure and volume associated with a single cycle of the heart. (Note: to relate  these time dependent-waveforms to other electrical and mechanical aspects of the heart, you may want  to review the cardiac cycle.)

A ventricular pressure-volume loop is generated by plotting points at any instant where the Y coordinate of a point is the ventricular pressure and the X coordinate is the ventricular volume. This is illustrated in the following figure.