Abstract
Pregnancy is a unique and dynamic process characterized by significant changes in the maternal cardiovascular system that are required to satisfy the increased maternal and fetal metabolic demands. Profound structural and hemodynamic adaptations occur during healthy pregnancy that allows the mother to maintain healthy hemodynamics and provide an adequate uteroplacental blood circulation to ensure physiological fetal development. Investigating these adaptations is crucial for understanding the physiology of pregnancy and may provide important insights for the management of high‐risk pregnancies. However, no previous modeling studies have investigated the maternal cardiac structural changes that occur during gestation. This study, therefore, had two aims. The first was to develop a lumped parameter model of the whole maternal circulation that is suitable for studying global hemodynamics and cardiac function at different stages of gestation. The second was to test the hypothesis that myofiber stress and wall shear stress homeostasis principles can be used to predict cardiac remodeling that occurs during normal pregnancy. Hemodynamics and cardiac variables predicted from simulations with and without controlled cardiac remodeling algorithms were compared and evaluated with reference clinical data. While both models reproduced the hemodynamic variations that arise in pregnancy, importantly, we show that the structural changes that occur with pregnancy could be predicted by assuming invariant homeostatic “target” values of myocardial wall stress and chamber wall shear stress.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
More From: International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.