The tendon of Todaro is part of the
fibrous skeleton of the heart, located in the
right atrium
The atrium (; : atria) is one of the two upper chambers in the heart that receives blood from the circulatory system. The blood in the atria is pumped into the heart ventricles through the atrioventricular mitral and tricuspid heart valves.
...
. It was described by Italian
anatomist
Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...
Francesco Todaro. It is a continuation of the
Eustachian valve of the inferior vena cava and the
Thebesian valve
In the anatomy of the heart, the valve of the coronary sinus (also called the Thebesian valve, after Adam Christian ThebesiusA. C. Thebesius. Disputatio medica inauguralis de circulo sanguinis in corde. Doctoral dissertation, Leiden, 1708.) is a ...
of the
coronary sinus
The coronary sinus () is the largest vein of the heart. It drains over half of the deoxygenated blood from the heart muscle into the right atrium. It begins on the backside of the heart, in between the left atrium, and left ventricle; it begi ...
.
It delimits the antero-superior boundary of the
triangle of Koch. The apex of Koch's triangle is the location of the
atrioventricular node
The atrioventricular node (AV node, or Aschoff-Tawara node) electrically connects the heart's atria and ventricles to coordinate beating in the top of the heart; it is part of the electrical conduction system of the heart. The AV node lies at the ...
.
The tendon is near-impossible to locate in a living heart, so clinicians use other features to determine the boundaries of the Koch's triangle. Some cardiologists even go as far as rejecting the usefulness of the tendom as an anatomical landmark altogether.
References
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{{anatomy-stub
Cardiac anatomy