What are all the parts a segment of blood would travel through to journey all the way to the lungs and back to the same part of the body?

Answer 1

I am going to do this entirely from memory so feel free to add and adjust but starting from the heart a drop of blood would be initially at the right atrium. It would proceed down the tricuspid valve or right atrioventricular valve (AV), into the right ventricle. from there it would travel up to the right semilunar valve into the pulmonary arteries. These arteries are carrying deoxygenated blood btw. from here it goes into the lungs where the capillaries will exchange CO2 and O2. the newly oxygenated blood will proceed to the pulmonary veins (i believe there are four), and wind up at the left atrium of the heart. Here it is pushed through the bicuspid, left AV valve, or mitral valve. why they give it three names is beyond me. it then enters the left ventricle and is pumped through the left semilunar valve. this leads it to the aorta where it can go 1 of three ways (to my belief...all i can recall are three ways...unless you are a fetus then its totally different). blood will go to the acending or decending aorta. which branches a lot into the brachiocephalic and carotid, or into the inguinal or femoral if it goes down the decending aorta. blood also needs to go back to nourish the heart so it can go the third way which is back into the coronary arteries. here it will branch into many parts, i dont remember them really but it ends up going back to the right atrium. after the blood goes to the arteries the generalized way back is that it goes to the arterioles then to the capillaries (this is where waste and oxygen/nutrient exchange occurs to keep the cells in homeostasis) then to the venuoles and to the veins. the veins are pretty much called the same as the arteries with few exceptions (jugular vein/carotid artery). from here the blood will go to a superior vena cava if coming from the upper extremity or the inferior vena cava if coming from the lower extremity. This leads back to the right atrium where we started. GOOD LUCK WITH A&P. Please feel free to correct me.