Computational analyses of aortic blood flow under varying speed CF-LVAD support

Peiying Sun, Selim Bozkurt, Esra Sorguven

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Continuous Flow Left Ventricular Assist Devices (CF-LVADs) generally operate at a constant speed whilst supporting a failing heart. However, constant speed CF-LVAD support may cause complications and increase the morbidity rates in the patients. Therefore, different varying speed operating modes for CF-LVADs have been proposed to generate more physiological blood flow, which may reduce complication rates under constant speed CF-LVAD support. The proposed varying speed CF-LVAD algorithms simulate time-dependant dynamics and three dimensional blood flow patterns in aorta under varying speed CF-LVAD support remain unclear. The aim of this study is to evaluate three dimensional blood flow patterns in a patient-specific aorta model under co-pulsating and counter-pulsating CF-LVAD support modes driven by speed and flow rate control algorithms using numerical simulations. Aortic blood flow was evaluated for 10,000 rpm constant speed CF-LVAD support generating 4.71 L/min mean flow rate over a cardiac cycle. Co-pulsating and counter-pulsating CF-LVAD speed control operated the pump at the same average speed over a cardiac cycle and co-pulsating and counter-pulsating CF-LVAD flow rate control generated the same average flow rate over cardiac cycle as in the constant speed pump support. Simulation results show that the utilised counter-pulsating pump flow rate control may decrease the haemolysis to a third compared to the most commonly employed constant speed pump operating mode. Moreover, CF-LVAD support utilising counter-pulsating pump flow rate control generated the most favourable hemodynamic characteristics, i.e. low Dean number, least wall shear stress and least haemolysis values among the investigated cases.

Original languageEnglish
Article number104058
Number of pages10
JournalComputers in biology and medicine
Volume127
Early online date14 Oct 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished (in print/issue) - 31 Dec 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords

  • Aortic blood flow
  • CF-LVAD
  • Continuous flow left ventricular assist device

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