Unveiling the role of the venous system in arterial hypertension: A computational study

Figures

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  Figure 1. Schematic representation of the closed‐loop model used in this study Grey boxes identify five cardiovascular compartments and show the way hypertension was modelled by introducing changes to the parametrization used in the normotensive case. Perturbations Δcomp are computed as specified in eqn (2).

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  Figure 2. Predicted blood pressure waveforms Computed blood pressure at selected arterial and venous vessels in normotensive (blue line) and hypertensive (red line) states. Cardiac cycle averaged values are denoted by p¯nt (normotensive) and p¯ht (hypertensive).

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  Figure 3. Global sensitivity analysis First‐order (left column) and total (right column) sensitivity indexes for mean (MBP), systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) brachial pressure.

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  Figure 4. Impact of parameter changes on systemic arterial pressure Square boxes represent mean values, whereas error bars denote the SD. Dashed horizontal lines represent the normotensive model output values. MBP: mean blood pressure; SBP: systolic blood pressure; DBP: diastolic blood pressure; PP: pulse pressure. All values are computed using pressure sampled at the midpoint of vessel 17 in Toro et al. (2022), corresponding to the left brachial artery.

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  Figure 5. Brachial artery pressure waveforms The normotensive case's results are shown in a dashed grey line. In contrast, the continuous red line displays the hypertensive case stochastic results, with a shaded area representing limits for ±1 SD. Results are shown for one‐at‐a‐time compartment parameter changes and for the case in which all compartments are affected, with sub‐plot titles indicating the compartment in which parameters were altered.