More than 25 million people worldwide are suffering from heart failure. In Italy this pathology affects one million individuals. On 7th June Professor Quarteroni took part in the conference “Management of Heart Failure: Current Challenges and Future Perspectives”, which brought professionals from all over the world to Palermo.The speeches concerned purely biochemical aspects and development of drug therapy.
Professor Quarteroni spoke about the importance of mathematics in this field of research: one of the possible applications concerns the realization of models that are able to describe how the drug spreads in the tissue and how it then manages to reach its target. In this way, it would also be possible to understand what is the most correct optimal administration of the drug, according to the objectives to be achieved.
In order to understand the kinetics of the drug it is fundamental to analyze the cellular and microscopic context. “Although with iHeart we are working more on a macroscopic and systemic level, what was learned during the conference is a stimulus to understand and to reason on a different level”, Quarteroni confirmed.
During his speech, Professor Quarteroni showed an example of hemodynamics of the blood in the left heart: it is clear that a heart that does not work properly can not guarantee a regular blood supply in the aorta and thus guarantee the proper diffusion of the drug.
A particularly interesting lecture was given by Professor Gorcsan of the University of Saint Louis in Missouri, during which the relationship between the ability of the heart to contract and the volume of blood emitted was discussed, based on an experimental imaging analysis. Mathematical models also make it possible to study this type of relationship in a complete and complex way: mathematics, therefore, proves to be a precious ally for many aspects of cardiac research, present and future.