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Ann Thorac Surg 2002;73:1032-1034
© 2002 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

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Editorial

A different kind of "total artificial heart": the interactive, computer-based human heart model

^a Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

* Address reprint requests to Dr Pasque, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, Suite 3103 Queeny Tower, One Barnes-Jewish Hospital Plaza, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA
e-mail: pasquem@msnotes.wustl.edu

Taken at first glance, the article by Gnaneswar and associates [1], which describes a complex engineering analysis of the aortic root, appears to be just another foray into the details of a topic dear to the hearts of most cardiothoracic surgeons—aortic root reconstruction. If you probe a little deeper, however, the true significance of this manuscript, which weds the unlikely partners of structural engineering and heart surgery, is readily appreciated. It represents, in fact, nothing less than a vital component of a clinical tool of the future that has the very real potential to change our subspecialty practice. The clinical tool to which I am referring is a different kind of total artificial heart than the one that is grabbing all of the headlines these days. This different kind of total artificial heart, to the contrary, will reside entirely in the mathematical depths of the desktop computer. Specifically, I am describing what most myocardial mechanics investigators might call the Holy Grail of cardiac physiology, a fully interactive, three-dimensional, computer-based model of the in vivo human heart.

That this study by Gnaneswar and associates [1], and for that matter this total artificial heart of the future, sits squarely in the realm of mathematics need not worry all of us nonmath types. I have not a clue how my personal computer works, but I use it every day. Likewise, most of us will not have a clue about the mathematical foundation of the computer-based heart models of the future. Nonetheless, I would predict that even the most mathematically challenged of us will, in the not too distant future, use it on a regular basis. Mathematical theory and applied mathematics are the building blocks of this model. Although the mathematics is what scares us the most about it, it is exactly . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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