Ventricular wall motion

Abstract

Before discussing Dr. Elzinga’s work, I thought it might be appropriate to take a moment to ease the transition from the first chapters on the mechanics of the isolated myocardium to ventricular mechanics and describe briefly the relationship between forces and deformation in the wall of the ventricle. To translate the elegant studies on isolated muscle discussed in the previous chapters to the intact heart, one must find a way to measure force and deformation in the complex thick wall of the ventricle. Most investigators have used membrane theory to calculate wall-forces and have measured deformation in the wall with some type of uniaxial measurement. As I will attempt to show you in recent data from our laboratory, motion in the ventricular wall is probably much too complex to allow either of these two analyses.