Background:
Progressive aortic valve disease has remained a persistent cause of concern in patients with left ventricular assist devices. Aortic incompetence (AI) is a known predictor of both mortality and readmissions in this patient population and remains a challenging clinical problem.
Methods:
Ten left ventricular assist device patients with de novo aortic regurgitation and 19 control left ventricular assist device patients were identified. Three-dimensional models of patients’ aortas were created from their computed tomography scans, following which large-scale patient-specific computational fluid dynamics simulations were performed with physiologically accurate boundary conditions using the SimVascular flow solver.
Results:
The spatial distributions of time-averaged wall shear stress and oscillatory shear index show no significant differences in the aortic root in patients with and without AI (mean difference, 0.67 dyne/cm
2
[95% CI, −0.51 to 1.85];
P
=0.23). Oscillatory shear index was also not significantly different between both groups of patients (mean difference, 0.03 [95% CI, −0.07 to 0.019];
P
=0.22). The localized wall shear stress on the leaflet tips was significantly higher in the AI group than the non-AI group (1.62 versus 1.35 dyne/cm
2
; mean difference [95% CI, 0.15–0.39];
P
<0.001), whereas oscillatory shear index was not significantly different between both groups (95% CI, −0.009 to 0.001;
P
=0.17).
Conclusions:
Computational fluid dynamics serves a unique role in studying the hemodynamic features in left ventricular assist device patients where 4-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging remains unfeasible. Contrary to the widely accepted notions of highly disturbed flow, in this study, we demonstrate that the aortic root is a region of relatively stagnant flow. We further identified localized hemodynamic features in the aortic root that challenge our understanding of how AI develops in this patient population.
Computational fluid dynamics visualizes turbulent flow in the aortic root of a patient under continuous-flow left ventricular assist device support
