Title: Mechanics of the septal wall may be affected by the presence of fibrotic infarct in the free wall at end-systole

Authors: Fulufhelo Nemavhola

Addresses: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of South Africa, Florida, South Africa; Chris Barnard Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, University of Cape Town, Observatory, South Africa

Abstract: The relationship between infarct mechanics and ventricular function of the septal wall in the presence of fibrotic infarct in the free wall remains poorly understood. This study compares the mechanics of the septal wall in the healthy and fibrotic infarcted rat heart models during active ejection. To simulate active contraction, three dimensional constitutive Fung model was implemented in Abaqus® commercial software. The endocardial pressures of LV and RV were applied such that the required end-systolic volumes were obtained. To simulate active contraction in the bi-ventricular rat heart model, the pressures of 14.6 kPa and 2.92 kPa were applied on the left ventricle and right ventricle chambers. It was observed in the presence of infarct in the free wall, the stress in the septal wall decreased when compared to the healthy heart. The increase in strain in the septal wall has serious practical implications in global and regional functioning of the heart.

Keywords: septal wall; myocardial mechanics; heart computational models; fibrotic infarct; infarct modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMEI.2019.101632

International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics, 2019 Vol.11 No.3, pp.205 - 225

Received: 24 Jul 2017
Accepted: 30 Jul 2017

Published online: 19 Aug 2019 *

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