Exercise induced inter-individual variation of right ventricular pressures: Simulations using a modular model of the cardiovascular system

Abstract

In recent years, the response of, especially, the right ventricle to intense exercise has gained increased interest. In this study, we use the CircAdapt model to evaluate the influence of inter-individual variation of pulmonary vascular resistance during exercise on cardiovascular hemodynamics. We modeled pulmonary vascular resistance as a nonlinear resistive module in which the resistance increases proportionally to stroke volume. We modeled inter-individual variation following normal random distributions. To evaluate the hemodynamic response to exercise, we computed pulmonary artery systolic pressure and end-systolic wall stress. With our modeling strategy, we were able to reproduce the phenomena observed clinically. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.