The Heart-Work-Calculator: How an Application Could Potentially Simplify the Generation of Noninvasive Left Ventricular Pressure–Volume Loops in Daily Clinical Care

Background: Invasive generated left ventricular pressure-volume loops (PVL) are considered the gold standard in the assessment of left ventricular function and efficiency. In the past, various methods have been established to generate left ventricular PVL noninvasively through echocardiography and simultaneous blood pressure measurement. However, the assessment of noninvasive left ventricular PVL requires complex formulas that hamper its inclusion in daily clinical care. Our aim was to provide a more user friendly option by developing an application which supports the generation of noninvasive left ventricular PVL and its derived left ventricular efficiency parameters.

Method: Based on established algorithms, we developed a free application for android systems. Special care was taken to provide a user friendly layout by exclusively asking for parameters that can be easily assessed through echocardiography (preejection and total systolic period of the left ventricular outflow tract and end-systolic and end-diastolic volume of the left ventricle), conventional blood pressure measurement, and heart rate assessment.

Results: By inputting the above-mentioned parameters, our application was able to generate and visualize noninvasive left ventricular PVL. In addition, the application provided parameters that give information on potential energy, stroke work, pressure–volume–area, end-systolic elastance, arterial elastance, arterial-ventricular coupling, cardiac work, and cardiac efficiency of the left ventricle.

Conclusion: The simple use of the Heart-Work-Calculator application allows the inclusion of its results in the daily clinical care. It might give additional information on left ventricular function by simplifying the generation of a noninvasive left ventricular PVL and its derived left-ventricular efficiency parameters. Through future data crowdsourcing, our application will be able to help in the establishment of noninvasive left ventricular PVL reference values.

No conflict of interest has been declared by the author(s).

Publication History

Article published online:
12 February 2022