Wiktionary
n. (context muscle English) The striated and involuntary muscle of the vertebrate heart.
WordNet
n. the muscle tissue of the heart; adapted to continued rhythmic contraction [syn: heart muscle]
Wikipedia
Cardiac muscle (heart muscle) is an involuntary, striated muscle that is found in the walls and histological foundation of the heart, specifically the myocardium. Cardiac muscle is one of three major types of muscle, the others being skeletal and smooth muscle. These three types of muscle all form in the process of myogenesis. The cells that constitute cardiac muscle, called cardiomyocytes or myocardiocytes, predominantly contain only one nucleus, although populations with two to four nuclei do exist. The myocardium is the muscle tissue of the heart, and forms a thick middle layer between the outer epicardium layer and the inner endocardium layer.
Coordinated contractions of cardiac muscle cells in the heart pump blood out of the atria and ventricles to the blood vessels of the left/body/systemic and right/lungs/pulmonary circulatory systems. This complex mechanism illustrates systole of the heart.
Cardiac muscle cells, unlike most other tissues in the body, rely on an available blood and electrical supply to deliver oxygen and nutrients and remove waste products such as carbon dioxide. The coronary arteries help fulfill this function.
Usage examples of "cardiac muscle".
He also saw that on microscopic section there had been evidence of histologic damage to the nerve cells of the dorsal root ganglia as well as to the cardiac muscle.
Not only could we potentially influence growth and development, but we'd probably be able to 'turn off' cancers, or, after heart attacks,'turn on'cellular division to create new cardiac muscle.
I've got surgery this morning and you're supposed to be checking the interpretation of those cardiac muscle cultures.
Placed with precision, an ice pick can penetrate atriums and ventricles, causing such a convulsive shock in cardiac muscle that the heart stops in an instant and forever.
Some were heart-tropic, meaning they moved through the veins to the heart and took up residence there, attaching themselves to the walls of the blood vessels that serviced the cardiac muscle.
A temporary pacemaker was forcing his damaged heart to beat-operating at power levels which would poison every cardiac muscle fiber with electrochemical by-products, in fifteen or twenty minutes at the most.