Modelling and simulation of blood circulation towards mitral valve replacement risk calculation

Abstract

The operative mortality of a mitral valve replacement surgery in patients who suffer from a rheumatic heart disease and who have a concurrent pulmonary arterial hypertension accounts for 15 to 31 %. The complexity of the disease and of the cardiovascular system itself makes it difficult to find a specific reason for the high operative mortality. In a first approach to this problem we modelled and simulated the blood circulation under normal and diseased conditions. Herewith, the blood circulation can be analysed as a whole in spite of its complexity. For this purpose, we decided to model with the help of an electrical circuit analogy because it is not spatially dependant, fast and computational economic. The model includes the systemic and the pulmonary blood circulation with the main vessel-types. Hereby, we used the Multisim software to model and simulate. Simulation results show that our model matches the theoretical mitral flow patters from other resources. This model has positive signs to be used for a mitral valve replacement risk classification.