Hemodynamics and wall shear metrics in a pulmonary autograft: Comparing a fluid-structure interaction and computational fluid dynamics approach.

Objective: In young patients, aortic valve disease is often treated by placement of a pulmonary autograft (PA) which adapts to its new environment through growth and remodeling. To better understand the hemodynamic forces acting on the highly distensible PA in the acute phase after surgery, we developed a fluid-structure interaction (FSI) framework and comprehensively compared hemodynamics and wall shear-stress (WSS) metrics with a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation.

Methods: The FSI framework couples a prestressed non-linear hyperelastic arterial tissue model with a fluid model using the in-house coupling code CoCoNuT.