Cardiac Mechanics and Function in the Normal and Diseased Heart [antikvár]

Foreword Cardiovascular dynamics is a field in which modelling and systems analysis have formed an extremely important discipline. For example, understanding of even such a fundamental function of the circulation as the relationship between central venous pressure and cardiac output has required evolution of a pertinent model based on years of exhaustive experimental investigations by Starling, Starr, and Guyton. Hemodynamic analyses of pulsatile pressures and flows in the arteries and veins have been a continuing challenge taken up by champions of fluid dynamics such as Frank, Wetterer, Taylor, and Wormersley, just to mention a few names, and some kind of model was always proposed as a conceptual framework. An even greater challenge to cardiovascular dynamicists was how to analyze the intermittent coupling of the ventricle and the arterial or venous vasculature through the valve. The availability of numerical solutions by computer and the recently evolved ventricular model with a time-varying elastance and a pressure-dependent internal resistance opened the way to analysis of this coupling. The ever-increasing speed of computers has also facilitated trips between the frequency and the time domain, even on-line for some experimental studies. This book contains many analyses dedicated to the interactions between the heart and the vasculature, providing the reader with findings at the cutting edge of current research in this field. Systems physiology pertains not only to the analysis of interaction at the organ level; it should be applied to a system at any level of interest, including cells, cellular organelles, and biological molecules. Whenever there are subcomponents of a system, there is interplay which contributes to the determination of the behavior of the system as a whole. Thus, a cardiac muscle cell is as complex a system as the ventricle itself, or a singular branch of artery or part of its wall. The recent worldwide advocacy of molecular and cellular physiology and pathophysiology by some funding agencies is outrageous. It may mislead young biomedical researchers into the blind faith that all the secrets of life and disease lie only in subcellular entities, and one-way explorations into the molecular world promise results of redeeming scientific value. True, the up-to-date knowledge gained by high technology is astounding and exciting. But microscopic details of any matters whether