Abstract
Radiofrequency catheter ablation is an interventional procedure used to treat arrhythmia. An electrode catheter that could inject saline has been developed to prevent steam pop on heart tissue during radiofrequency catheter ablation. Thus, we investigated to numerical model on the effect of saline injection and heart tissue’s deformation. In this study, the hyperelastic model was implemented to analyze heart tissue deformation due to the catheter’s contact force. Besides, the advection–diffusion equation was used to analyze the mixture between saline and blood. We developed the multiphysics model that predicts thermal lesions based on the deformation of the heart and mixing between saline and blood flow. The thermal lesion and the maximum temperature in the numerical model that considered mixing saline and blood were smaller than that of other numerical models that did not consider mixing. Therefore, we observed that the saline injection was affected by thermal lesion due to higher electrical conductivity than blood flow and injection at a lower temperature than the human body. The numerical model was researched that considering the deformation of the heart tissue and saline injection in radiofrequency catheter ablation affects the heart tissue’s thermal lesion and maximum temperature.
Highlights
The saline temperature is lower than body temperature, which affects the generation of the thermal lesion in the heart tissue due to convective heat transfer when injected from the electrode
For the model considering mixing between saline and blood, the electrical conductivity of saline calculated in Equation (7) was higher than those for which mixing was not considered in the surrounding electrode and in the interfaces of heart tissue and blood
The numerical model was investigated that considering the deformation of the heart tissue and saline injection in radiofrequency catheter ablation affect the thermal lesion and maximum temperature of the heart tissue
Summary
The heat generated at the electrode necrotizes the heart tissue that causes arrhythmia, thereby treating arrhythmia. If the temperature of the heart tissue and the electrode increases to become more than 80 ◦ C while performing radiofrequency catheter ablation, the blood flowing inside the heart attaches with the electrode to generate a thrombus. The phenomenon in which an electrode catheter inside the heart injects saline involves mixing blood and saline. Because the electrical conductivity of saline is higher than blood flow, it affects the impedance of the electrode. The saline temperature is lower than body temperature, which affects the generation of the thermal lesion in the heart tissue due to convective heat transfer when injected from the electrode. Previous studies have a limitation that blood flow or the change of electrical conductivity of saline was not considered. Some studies have ignored the area on the blood inside the heart and replaced it with the heat flux boundary condition using convective heat transfer coefficient, whereas some studies that considered the area on the blood inside the heart replaced it with the same to perform the analysis [3,11,14,15,16]
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