Modeling obstetric cardiovascular physiology on a full-scale patient simulator.

To our knowledge, this is the first attempt at adapting an existing cardiovascular model to simulate the hemodynamics of a particular patient population. Despite attempts to define the physiologic alterations in advance, we discovered there were critical parameters not completely defined in the literature. These were discovered through the iterative process of testing, comparing resulting vital signs with targets, and literature review. A list of the parameters that should be sought for future modeling efforts is provided (Table 3), but this list is by no means exhaustive. As further work is performed in this area, additional independent and essential parameters will be identified (pressure characteristics of valvular anomalies, for example). To define a physiology that is less well described in the literature, empirical alterations and best-guess estimates of parameter changes will be required with significantly more iterations. Finally, we have described only modeling of cardiovascular physiology, modeling the respiratory system will require a similar process.