A Family of Circulatory Computers Models developed to analyse and predict Physiopathological Events: application to Microcirculatory and Ventilatory Assistance

The aim of this work is to present a family of circulatory computer models suitable to be used for analysis and prediction. Circulatory models can reproduce many circulatory phenomena for several practical applications referable to the main functional sectors of analysis and prediction. Of course, the models are different in relation to the phenomena to be represented. An important issue is the possibility to represent the artero-ventricular interactions and the effects, in different ventricular conditions, of the influence of mechanical ventilatory and circulatory assistance. In these models of human cardiovascular system, the influence of mechanical ventilation was introduced, changing the thoracic pressure to positive values. In the work, two different applications were presented: in the first the trends of the haemodynamic variables were analysed when mechanical ventilation of the lungs was applied for different values of mean intrathoracic pressures. In the second, were presented the effects on the haemodynamic variables of the left ventricular assist device (in particular a rotary blood pump) that aspirates blood from the left ventricle and ejects it into the aorta.