Flow simulation studies in coronary arteries--impact of side-branches

Wall shear stress (WSS) may induce local remodeling of the vascular wall and the WSS pattern in turn depends on vascular geometry. We aimed to elucidate the impact of side-branches on local WSS.

Steady numerical flow simulation studies were performed in three-dimensional reconstructed right coronary artery (RCA) trees. RCA from seven controls, five patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and five patients with aneurysmatic CAD (AnCAD) classified by expert visual diagnosis were studied. Then three transient flow simulations were performed with cases representative for each group in order to evaluate the impact of pulsatile flow simulation. As vascular size and flow rates vary considerably between patients, non-dimensional approaches were applied for group comparison. A point-to-point comparison of the WSS in the same tree with and without side-branches revealed local differences in WSS of up to 12.0 Pa. This was caused by a reduction of volume flow of up to 78.7% in the trunk. Differences are not only limited to bifurcation sites but also affect local narrowings and strongly curved segments. The point-to-point comparison of steady and transient simulations found an average increase of WSS of below 7% in transient simulations. No significant differences were found between histograms of pulsatile and steady simulations, showing a high cross-correlation of >0.97.

Side-branches must not be neglected in numerical flow simulation (steady and transient) studies. Steady simulations are valid for an assessment of time-averaged WSS distributions.