Vessels: Introduction

00:01 In this lecture, I’m going to describe the histological structure of arteries that carry blood away from the heart to the tissues, veins that return that blood back to the heart, and the structure of capillaries where really all the work is done, where all the exchange occurs from the blood to the interstitial compartments surrounding cells. And then from that compartment, exchanging waste products and other substances back into the venous system, the venous components of the capillary beds to then circulate those products elsewhere in the body. And finally, I’ll touch on lymph vessels, but I would also talk about lymph vessels when we look at the lymphoid tissues in a later lecture. Well, hopefully, at the end of this lecture, you’ll have a good understanding of how an artery is structured and how a vein is structured. It’s important that you distinguish between elastic arteries and muscular arteries, and be able to identify the difference between small arteries, arterials, and also capillaries. It’s important to understand what the functions of elastic arteries are, and what the functional role of smooth muscle is in the wall of arteries and also veins. You need to identify veins, large and small and be able to tell the difference between a vein and an artery. And finally, I’m going to point out the structure of lymphatic vessel. But as I said, that will be dealt in more detail when I talk about the lymphoid tissues in another lecture.