Computational Hemodynamic Analysis of a Patient Specific Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm

Abstract

Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a cardiovascular disease caused by the enlargement of the aorta in the abdomen over time. Unless treated, the growth of AAA continues, resulting in 80% death in the case of rupture. Today, the width of the aneurysm diameter is taken into account in clinical practice to examine the status of AAA. Although there are aneurysms that do not rupture despite reaching a diameter of 9 cm, it is reported that aneurysms with a diameter of 3 cm are ruptured in several cases. Therefore, analyzing only the AAA diameter is not a reliable method, and a deeper investigation is necessary for the rupture risk assessment. In this study, a patient's situation is analyzed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, which allows to elucidate the flow dependent parameters such as velocity, vorticity, pressure, and wall shear stress (WSS). First, the patient-specific geometry was obtained and boundary conditions were defined at the inlet and the outlet of the flow domain. The effects of intraluminal thrombus (ILT) formation and patient’s effort conditions were also included in the analysis. According to the results, WSS and vorticity increase with the increasing blood flow velocity. In terms of the rupture risk, it has been found that the effect of patient’s effort level is more critical than the amount of ILT in the AAA.