When I was in elementary school, our Health textbooks up through perhaps 4th grade always used the term “auricle” to refer to the upper chamber of the heart. You had auricles and you had ventricles. At some point a teacher or a textbook instructed that this term should not be used, that the proper term was “atrium”.
I haven’t heard “auricle” in years. For some reason it floated up in my head this morning and I googled “auricle” and examined the wikipedia entries and discovered that there’s actually a different part of the upper heart’s anatomy referred to as the auricle, although I also found reference to the “older” use of auricle as a synonym for atrium.
Question, especially for you medically trained folks who are 50ish or beyond: was auricle ever the preferred / medically-correct term for the upper heart chamber, or was atrium always in use and considered the preferable term? Any clue as to why “auricle” would have been the term we were first taught in our coursework?
(I was in 4th grade in '69 and our textbooks may have been up to 6 years out of date, given what I remember of how often they cycled out older versions for newer ones, etc)
Medical terms change, usually because of a better understanding of structure and function.
During my career, EKG changed to ECG. I still use the former. Old habits die hard.
I have an old copy of The Classic Collector’s Edition Gray’s Anatomy. Auricle is used exclusively for the upper chambers of the heart.
I learned “Atrium” in nursing school in 1970. That’s as much as I can tell you. There will probably be someone from the period of transition along eventually.
I happen to have a medical dictionary from 1948 (The American Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 21st edition, by W.A. Newman Dorland). The main entry for this anatomic feature is under “auricle” (as the second defintion, the first being the pinna of the ear). The entry for “atrium cordis” (artium of the heart) directs the reader to the “auricle” entry.
When I learned anatomy in the mid-'80s, we were taught that the upper chambers of the heart were atria, and the auricles were those little blind muscular pouches coming off the atria.
I just checked a family medical heirloom, a 1933 Sobotta anatomy atlas. It defines atria and auricles in the exact same way.
Maybe there are regional differences in terminology, or old habits die harder in some places than in others.
