Left ventricular implantation of biomaterials

In recent years, there has been a significant effort to restore heart function by the addition of stem cells directly into the myocardium. These cells are normally carried in a synthetic extracellular matrix and implanted into the injured heart. While there has been little demonstration of actual tissue regeneration using such methods, there has been long-term improvement from these techniques, and surprisingly, from the implantation of biomaterials alone, without any included cells. This has in fact led to therapies that directly add passive materials into the ventricle to help prevent heart failure. Therefore, theoretically evaluating the addition of passive material volumes into the myocardium is of clinical importance to understand the mechanisms for the improvement of ventricular mechanics and for optimizing such treatments. In this chapter we discuss the role of finite element studies in investigating the direct addition of non-contractile materials into the myocardium.