Abstract
Cardiac muscle is made up of cross-striated fibres, quasi-cylindrical in shape, which bifurcate and connect with adjacent fibres to form a complex three-dimensional network (Figs. 2, 6, 8). Each fibre is a linear unit composed of several cardiac muscle cells joined end-to-end or end-to-side, in an interdigitating rectangular step-like manner, by specialized junctional complexes called intercalated discs (Figs. 6, 8, 12). Since individual muscle cells (myocytes) rarely branch, the bifurcation of fibres is mainly due to end-to-side interdigitations (see Sommer 1982).
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© 1986 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Canale, E.D., Campbell, G.R., Smolich, J.J., Campbell, J.H. (1986). Morphology of Cardiac Muscle. In: Cardiac Muscle. Handbook of Microscopic Anatomy, vol 2 / 7. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-50115-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-50115-9_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-50117-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-50115-9
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