Heart failure assessment with a multiscale model

Many cardiac diseases lead to heart failure (HF) causing increasing morbidity and mortality worldwide. Several alterations at the myocyte level have been identified, but their specific influence on contractile and hemodynamic impairment is not yet clear. Mathematical modeling is a tool to address this issue enabling the analysis of individual myocyte changes on the overall circulatory response. Some myocyte models have been able to reproduce the impact of HF on experimentally detected myocyte components (1), but their integration into a ventricular model forming part of a multiscale circulatory approach has not been fully undertaken. Thus, the aim of this study is to compare the experimental hemodynamic and regional contractile response to acute HF versus a multiscale model based on a human myocyte representation. The experimentally-validated multiscale model shows adequate coupling between myocyte-derived left ventricular chamber and circulatory properties , and would be useful to predict the contractile and hemodynamic response to HF changes in myocyte variables