SoftHeart: a mathematical and software simulation for heart restyling

The left ventricular reduction called Batista's procedure (BP) is a surgical technique able to improve the ventricular function in the heart disease known as Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). From a geometrical point of view the BP is a restyling of the left ventricle from a spherical configuration to an ellipsoidal one. The authors have written a program ("SoftHeart") which simulates the response of the heart after the BP. The main products of the authors' program are the new ejection fraction and the new stroke volume as a function of the equatorial surgical reduction. Using these curves it is possible to classify the patients into three categories corresponding to a Gaussian-like curve, a flat curve and a monotonic descending curve, respectively. A clinical trial performed on 165 patients allows a good correlation between the three categories built by "SoftHeart" and three different clinical situations. An explanation of the three categories produced by "SoftHeart" using the Laplace and the Frank-Starling laws is reported.