Abstract

Previous experimental evidence has shown the effect of temperature on the action potential duration (APD). It has also been demonstrated that regional cooling of the heart can prolong the APD and promote the termination of ventricular tachycardia. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the effect of hypothermia in suppressing cardiac arrhythmias using numerical modeling. For this purpose, we developed a mathematical model that couples Pennes’ bioheat equation and the bidomain model to simulate the effect of heat on the cardiac action potential. The simplification of the proposed heat–bidomain model to the heat–monodomain model is provided. A suitable numerical scheme for this coupling, based on a time adaptive mesh finite element method, is also presented. First, we performed two-dimensional numerical simulations to study the effect of heat on a regular electrophysiological wave, with the comparison of the calculated and experimental values of Q10. Then, we demonstrated the effect of global hypothermia in suppressing single and multiple spiral waves.

Highlights

  • Several experimental studies have demonstrated the significant effect of induced hypothermia on cardiac and neurological outcomes for patients

  • Numerical modeling can provide valuable contribution for the understanding of the role of temperature effects in the cardiac electrical dynamics, which is the main aim of this paper

  • The heat–bidomain model combined with the Mitchell–Schaeffer model was used for the ionic representation

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Summary

Introduction

Several experimental studies have demonstrated the significant effect of induced hypothermia on cardiac and neurological outcomes for patients (see [1] for a review). Hypothermia is recommended as a therapeutic treatment for cases of spinal cord and brain injuries (see [2] and [3]), and it is used as a standard treatment for cardiac arrest [4]. The modeling of the effects of temperature on the cardiac electrical wave has previously been performed mostly by modifying the ionic activity. An ionic model that considers the temperature dependence of electrical parameters was presented in [5]. In 2006, a modified FitzHugh–Nagumo monodomain model combined with the Pennes’ equation was proposed [8] to include the influence of temperature on the behavior of a simulated nerve.

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