Optimization of Balloon Obstruction for Simulating Equivalent Pressure Drop in In-Vivo Conditions

The study of hemodynamics in an animal model associated with coronary stenosis has been limited due to the lack of a safe, accurate, and reliable technique for creating an artificial stenosis. Creating artificial stenosis using occluders in an open-chest procedure has often caused myocardial infarction (MI) or severe injury to the vessel resulting in high failure rates. To minimize these issues, closed-chest procedures with internal balloon obstruction were often used to create artificial stenosis. However, it should be noted that the hemodynamics in a blood vessel with internal balloon obstruction as opposed to physiological stenosis hasn’t been compared. Hence, the aim of this research is to computationally evaluate the pressure drop in balloon obstruction and compare with that in physiological stenosis. It was observed that the flow characteristics in balloon obstruction are more viscous dominated, whereas it is momentum dominated in physiological stenosis. Balloon radius was iteratively varied to get a pressure drop equivalent to that of physiological stenosis at mean hyperemic flow rates. A linear relation was obtained to predict equivalent balloon obstruction for physiological stenosis.