During the Pandemic, I worked with Dr. Pim Oomen at the UVA Cardiac Biomechanics Lab under Dr. Jeffrey Holmes. Heart failure (HF) is a leading cause of hospitalizations and is only becoming more prevalent around the world. Approximately half of the patients suffering from HF have heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). A preserved ejection fraction is associated with concentric cardiac remodeling of the left ventricle.

Patients with HFpEF have not reacted positively to the current treatments for HF nor have many interventions improved quality of life. However, a new alternative treatment, consisting of moderately increasing heart rate, has shown promising results in restoring normal cardiac function in pigs with HFpEF. The goal of my research is to understand why increased heart rate reverses the remodeling of HFpEF and restores normal cardiac function.

I used a compartment cardiac model in MATLAB to mimic the pigs’ cardiac parameters from the literature, mainly focusing on volume and pressure overload. I successfully adjusted the model’s circulation parameters to match the reported Mean Artiel Pressure. Subsequently, I successfully reproduced remodeling during HFpEF using a combination of mechanical and hormonal factors to enable growth.