Physiological control of an in-series connected pulsatile VAD: numerical simulation study

Numerical modeling of heart valves using resistive Eulerian surfaces

The goal of this work is the development and numerical implementation of a mathematical model describing the functioning of heart valves. To couple the pulsatile blood flow with a highly deformable thin structure (the valve's leaflets), a resistive Eulerian surfaces framework is adopted. A lumped-parameter model helps to couple the movement of the leaflets with the blood dynamics. A reduced circulation model describes the systemic hemodynamics and provides a physiological pressure profile at the downstream boundary of the valve. The resulting model is relatively simple to describe for a healthy valve and pathological heart valve functioning while featuring an affordable computational burden. Efficient time and spatial discretizations are considered and implemented. We address in detail the main features of the proposed method, and we report several numerical experiments for both two-dimensional and three-dimensional cases with the aim of illustrating its accuracy. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Theoretical estimation of cannulation methods for left ventricular assist device support as a bridge to recovery

Left ventricular assist device (LVAD) support under cannulation connected from the left atrium to the aorta (LA-AA) is used as a bridge to recovery in heart failure patients because it is non-invasive to ventricular muscle. However, it has serious problems, such as valve stenosis and blood thrombosis due to the low ejection fraction of the ventricle. We theoretically estimated the effect of the in-series cannulation, connected from ascending aorta to descending aorta (AA-DA), on ventricular unloading as an alternative to the LA-AA method. We developed a theoretical model of a LVAD-implanted cardiovascular system that included coronary circulation. Using this model, we compared hemodynamic responses according to various cannulation methods such as LA-AA, AA-DA, and a cannulation connected from the left ventricle to ascending aorta (LV-AA), under continuous and pulsatile LVAD supports. The AA-DA method provided 14% and 18% less left ventricular peak pressure than the LA-AA method under continuous and pulsatile LVAD conditions, respectively. The LA-AA method demonstrated higher coronary flow than AA-DA method. Therefore, the LA-AA method is more advantageous in increasing ventricular unloading whereas the AA-DA method is a better choice to increase coronary perfusion.