Evaluation of vascular aging on measures of cardiac function and mechanical efficiency: insights from modeling.

Introduction: This study evaluated the hypothesis that vascular aging (VA) reduces ventricular contractile function and mechanical efficiency (ME) using the left ventricular pressure-volume (PV) construct.

Methods: A previously published computational model (CM) was modified to evaluate the hypothesis in two phases. In phase I, the CM included five settings of aortic compliance () from normal to stiff, studied at a heart rate of 80 bpm, and phase II included the normal to stiff settings evaluated at 60, 100, and 140 bpm.