Eponyms in the human heart anatomy

Abstract

The present time is characterized by an increase in the pace of life, and medicine is no exception. Often, when analyzing the medical literature, specialists are faced with the fact that in different publications almost the same structure has a different name, which causes misunderstanding among specialists in various medical fields. This is especially true for clinicians who use the convenient anatomical names of fundamental scientists such as morphologists. As these names, terms from the International Anatomical Nomenclature are used, along with which, especially in clinical anatomy and medicine, eponymous names are accepted. The use of the latter can also be misunderstood, because eponyms are absent in modern anatomical terminology. However, additional knowledge of eponyms, along with common terms, gives the opportunity to look into the past and honor the memory of those who first described the structures. The paper attempts to systematize the names - eponyms of human heart structures. The need for such work exists because many structures have several eponymous names. In addition, if you arrange the terms in the chronological order of their occurrence, you can trace the main stages in the history of the human heart study. Despite the large number of eponymous names for the same structure and the doubtful attribution of some authors, the work lists only the most common eponyms in domestic and foreign literature, about the origin and authors of which reliable information was found. In 1955, at the IV International Congress of Anatomists in Paris (Paris Anatomical Nomenclature, PNA), eponymous names were excluded from the terminology. There are a number of objective reasons for this, but at the same time, the main function of eponyms is lost - the preservation and transmission to descendants the memory of major figures of medical science who made a significant contribution to its development. Therefore, despite the exclusion of eponyms from the official terminology, these terms are widely used today both at the departments of universities in the world, and in clinical literature and practice.