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Left ventricular dimensions from routine clinical one-plane cineangiograms were combined with left ventricular pressure measurements to permit calculation of left ventricular wall stresses. The 25 patients included 12 with normal left ventricular dynamics, 6 with volume overload, 3 with outflow obstruction, and 4 with cardiomyopathy. Average stresses calculated on the basis of an ellipsoid model agreed with average values obtained from the exact solution of a thick-walled elastic ellipsoidal shell. Peak values were 150 to 625 g/cm 2 in the circular direction and 75 to 365 g/cm 2 in the longitudinal direction. A fiber-corrected stress was defined which represents a force per muscle fiber. The variation in fiber-corrected stress during the cardiac cycle may be considerably different from the variation in simple stress. The force-velocity characteristics of circular fibers for the 25 patients are presented. The data on peak wall stress overlap in the four groups of patients. Peak velocity of circumferential fiber shortening varied from 0.44 to 0.63 lengths/sec in patients with myocardial weakness and varied from 0.74 to 2.56 lengths/sec in the other patients. Contractile element velocity was determined during ventricular ejection when the rate of force change equaled zero. Contractile element velocity of shortening was 0.22 to 0.32 lengths/sec in the cardiomyopathy group and 0.50 to 1.32 lengths/sec in the other patients.
Falsetti et al. (Thu,) studied this question.