Effects of stent length, transition length and overexpansion in stented coronary arteries

Abstract

In this work, we study the effect of stent length, stent transition length and stent overexpansion under the influence of dynamic changes in curvature and torsion. It is our objective to understand the influence of these three parameters on local hemodynamics. Three-dimensional, spatiotemporally resolved computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of pulsatile flow with moving wall boundaries and fluid structure interaction were carried out for a simplified coronary artery with physiologically relevant flow parameters. A model with moving deformable walls with an elastic modulus change of five in the stented section is used as the baseline control case. From the local hemodynamics and wall shear stress changes, it can be concluded that the smaller stent length that adequately covers the lesion site, higher transition length and lower overexpansion of the stented section would lead to improved flow conditions in the stented artery.