Background In the endovascular treatment of thoracoabdominal aortic disease, reconstruction of renal arteries is of great importance. Previous computational fluid dynamics analyses on renal arteries often depend on an idealized three-dimensional vascular model after stent implantation, and the left and right renal arteries are symmetric and do not conform to physiological reality.
Objective To construct three-dimensional models of idealized thoracoabdominal aorta after implantation of a multibranch endograft based on the anatomical morphology of renal arteries in the Chinese population, and investigate the impact of physiologically asymmetric renal artery morphology on blood flow in both renal arteries of the idealized models.
Methods A total of 16 idealized models were constructed according to the take-off angle and the stent length in the renal artery, followed by the calculation of time-averaged blood flowrate, blood flow patterns, and wall shear stress of branch vessels using computational fluid dynamics.
Results The time-averaged blood flow in the renal arteries was higher when the angle was 95 ° than when it was 108 °, and was also higher when the length of the renal artery stent was 60 mm than when it was 70 mm. In addition, flow recirculation zones and low wall shear stress could be seen at the bend of the renal artery.
Conclusion In this study, idealized thoracoabdominal aorta models after a multibranched endograft implantation are constructed, and asymmetric renal artery morphology may affect the time-averaged blood flowrate in renal arteries by using computational fluid dynamics techniques. It is necessary to construct an idealized renal artery model with the asymmetric anatomical morphology of the renal artery.
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