Video - Frank-Starling relationship

The Frank-Starling mechanism is a physiological principle that explains how the heart responds to changes in venous return. Increases in venous return cause the heart's chambers to fill with more blood, which then causes the heart to stretch and contract more forcefully, and pump more blood out to the rest of the body. The Frank-Starling mechanism is named after physiologist Otto Frank and anatomist Ernest Starling, who first described it in 1899.