Atrial fibrillation (AF), causing irregular and rapid heartbeats, is the most common
arrhythmia. Due to the widespread impact on the population and the disabling symptoms
related to rapid heart rate, AF is a subject of growing interest under several aspects:
statistical analyses on the heartbeat distributions, risk factors, impact on quality of life,
correlation with other cardiac pathologies. However, several key points on the
consequences induced by AF on the cardiovascular system are still not completely
understood. The proposed work aims at quantifying the impact of AF on the most relevant
cardiovascular parameters by means of a lumped-parameter modeling, paying particular
attention to the stochastic nature of the irregular heartbeats and the reduced contractility of
the heart. The global response leads to a rather impressive overall agreement with the
clinical state-of-the-art measures regarding AF: reduced cardiac output with correlated
arterial hypotension, as well as higher left atrial volume and pressure values are some of
the most representative outcomes emerging during AF. Moreover, new insights on
hemodynamic parameters such as cardiac flow rates, which are difficult to measure and
almost never offered in literature, are here provided
