An improved SPICE heart model that obeys Starling's law

This paper details a versatile and easy to use electrical network model of the heart in which the user can control the heart rate, blood pressure, end-diastolic left ventricular pressure, and proportion of time spent in systole. Several dysrhythmias and cardiac diseases can be simulated, including asystole, second and third degree heart blocks, brady- and tachycardias, premature ventricular contractions, premature atrial contractions, sinus dysrhythmias, hypo- and hypertension, pericardial tamponade and combinations of these. The model's output simulates empiric data with a 99% correlation, and the heart obeys Starling's law and can simulate congestive heart failure. This model is substantially more flexible than our previous version (Goldstein, et al., Comput. Methods Progr. Biomed. 33 (1990) 27-34) making it a more powerful adjunct for studying cardiac neurohormonal feedback theories and for exploring general systemic cardiovascular hemodynamics.