Modeling and simulation of cardiovascular system under cardiac arrest for finding a more effective CPR technique

Abstract

Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) saves life. However, all the current CPR methods produce only one third to one quarter of the normal cardiac output and hence post-CPR survival has remained very poor. We report a better CPR technique exhibiting increased cardiac output as compared to existing techniques. Obviously, one cannot perform such studies on humans; therefore, we developed a fluidic model of the cardiovascular system under cardiac arrest. This enabled us to actuate different organs independently, sequentially and/or combinatorially to find the most effective CPR technique. Extensive simulations were performed using Simscape®. Our novel combination (combination-1) shows 10.75% improvement in peak aortic pressure and 8.3% improvement in peak cardiac flow-rate with 120 compressions per minute with respect to the baseline CPR method as per AHA/ERC guidelines. Similar improvements were observed at compression rates of 80 and 100 per minute. In addition to finding a more effective CPR technique, we also present our passive cardiovascular model as an open-source software package where different preconditions and modalities can be set prior to conducting the cardiovascular simulations. Thus, it may also serve as a simulator to explore the cardiovascular system behaviors as well as the effects of different contributing factors.