What Is Starling’s Law of the Heart?

By Staff WriterLast Updated March 25, 2020

Starling’s law of the heart, which is actually Frank-Starling’s law, shows that the stroke volume of the heart grows as the volume of blood filling the heart increases, even if everything else stays the same. The law was named after two different physiologists, Otto Frank and Ernest Starling.

The law of the heart has several names, including Starlings law, Frank-Starling mechanism and Maestrini heart’s law. The law and its research was inspired by the work of Maestrini four years before the law of heart was produced. Maestrini began his work in 1914, while Frank and Starling built their work upon his in 1918. Many people feel that Maestrini should have gotten more credit for the work he had put into the research those years before.