Mechanical insights into volume overloaded left heart: two-chamber diastolic-systolic functional diseases
Mitral regurgitation has been recently recognized as a rapidly growing epidemic due to the increase of older populations who generally present prolapse of a single area of the valve. The challenge in Clinics is the identification of the best indexes and the correlation with severe conditions in asymptomatic patients affected by functional diseases.
We planned to investigate the LV-LA pair using both image-based clinical studies, and simplified mechanical models, with the intention to start from a new mechanical modeling which looks at the pair LV-LA as a system whose coupling changes due to MR, as mitral valve is never completely closed, and thus determines a change in the mechanical function of the left heart.
The expected impact of the research is sought in terms of the take up of new research and innovation practices for making diagnosis more effective. The challenge to identify a significant parameter from mechanical analysis, which allows to identify the onset of the disease also when it is asymptomatic.