In vitro assessment of pacing as therapy for aortic regurgitation

Clinical evaluation of pacing therapy in mitigating the aortic insufficiency after transchateter aortic valve implantation often gives contradictory outcomes... ...A series of in vitro tests reproducing the heart operating changes clinically obtained by pacing was carried out in a 26 mm Edwards Sapien XT prosthesis with mild paravalvular leakage. The effect of pacing on the regurgitant volumes per cycle and per minute was quantified, and the energy and power consumed by the left ventricle were calculated... … Following well-developed methodologies for evaluation of cardiovascular devices and in vitro haemodynamics features,14 15 physiological pulsatile flow conditions were replicated in a hydromechanical pulse duplicator …