Analysis of Fluid–Structure Interaction Mechanisms for a Native Aortic Valve, Patient-Specific Ozaki Procedure, and a Bioprosthetic Valve

The Ozaki procedure is a surgical technique which avoids to implant foreign aortic valve prostheses in human heart, using the patient’s own pericardium. Although this approach has well-identified benefits, it is still a topic of debate in the cardiac surgical community, which prevents its larger use to treat valve pathologies. This is linked to the actual lack of knowledge regarding the dynamics of tissue deformations and surrounding blood flow for this autograft pericardial valve. So far, there is no numerical study examining the coupling between the blood flow characteristics and the Ozaki leaflets dynamics. To fill this gap, we propose here a comprehensive comparison of various performance criteria between a healthy native valve, its pericardium-based counterpart, and a bioprosthetic solution, this is done using a three-dimensional fluid–structure interaction solver. Our findings reveal similar physiological dynamics between the valves but with the emergence of fluttering for the Ozaki leaflets and higher velocity and wall shear stress for the bioprosthetic heart valve.