The Hemodynamics of Aneurysms Treated with Flow-Diverting Stents Considering both Stent and Aneurysm/Artery Geometries

Abstract

Flow diverting stents are deployed to reduce the blood flow into the aneurysm, which would thereby induce thrombosis in the aneurysm sac; the stents prevent its rupture. The present study aimed to examine and quantify the impacts of different flow stents on idealized configurations of the cerebral artery. In our study, we considered a spherical sidewall aneurysm located on curved and tortuous idealized artery vessels and three stents with different porosities (70, 80 and 90%) for deployment. Using computational fluid dynamics, the local hemodynamics in the presence and absence of the stents were simulated, respectively, under the assumption that the blood flow was unsteady and non-Newtonian. The hemodynamic parameters, such as the intra-aneurysmal flow, velocity field and wall shear stress and its related indices, were examined and compared among the 12 cases simulated. The results illustrated that with the stent deployment, the intra-aneurysmal flow and the wall shear stress and its related indices were considerably modified depending on both stent and aneurysm/artery geometries, and that the intra-aneurysmal relative residence time increased rapidly with decreasing stent porosity in all the vessel configurations. These results also inform the rationale for selecting stents for treating aneurysms of different configurations.