[Relationship between the myocardial mass and the volume of human heart ventricles in hypertrophy].

The weight and volume values of heart ventricles from patients dying of cardio-vascular and some other diseases were studied. Measuring of sarcomeres in freely fixed and controlled pressure-fixed hearts showed that with the former method of fixation heart ventricles were contracted and the volume of their cavity approached the tidal volume. In freely fixed and "fresh" hearts removed at autopsies within 2-27 hours after death, concentric and excentric hypertrophy of ventricles may be characterized by numeric values of the relative mass: the ratio of ventricle mass to volume of its cavity, and in the left ventricle--by the relative diameter of the cavity: the ratio of the cavity diameter in cross-section to the thickness of the ventricle wall.