Patient-Specific Hemodynamic Simulations in a Group of Patients With Coronary Artery Aneurysms Caused by Kawasaki Disease

Kawasaki disease (KD) is an acute febrile illness that can result in life threatening coronary artery aneurysms in up to 25% of untreated patients. These aneurysms put patients at risk for thrombus formation, myocardial infarction and sudden death. Currently, clinical decisions are made based on anatomy alone, with aneurysm diameter > 8mm as the arbitrary cutoff for anticoagulation therapy, despite a lack of evidence for this choice. We postulate that patient specific hemodynamics may be a better predictor for the risk of thrombosis than maximum diameter alone. To quantify hemodynamics, we performed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations using patient specific models with custom coronary boundary conditions.