Stiffness matters: Improved failure risk assessment of ascending thoracic aortic aneurysms.

Objectives: Rupture and dissection are feared complications of ascending thoracic aortic aneurysms caused by mechanical failure of the wall. The current method of using the aortic diameter to predict the risk of wall failure and to determine the need for surgical resection lacks accuracy. Therefore, this study aims to identify reliable and clinically measurable predictors for aneurysm rupture or dissection by performing a personalized failure risk analysis, including clinical, geometrical, histologic, and mechanical data.

Growth and remodeling in the pulmonary autograft: Computational evaluation using kinematic growth models and constrained mixture theory.

Computational investigations of how soft tissues grow and remodel are gaining more and more interest and several growth and remodeling theories have been developed. Roughly, two main groups of theories for soft tissues can be distinguished: kinematic-based growth theory and theories based on constrained mixture theory. Our goal was to apply these two theories on the same experimental data.

Mechano-biological adaptation of the pulmonary artery exposed to systemic conditions.

Cardiac surgeries may expose pulmonary arterial tissue to systemic conditions, potentially resulting in failure of that tissue. Our goal was to quantitatively assess pulmonary artery adaptation due to changes in mechanical environment. In 17 sheep, we placed a pulmonary autograft in aortic position, with or without macroporous mesh reinforcement.

Reinforcing the pulmonary artery autograft in the aortic position with a textile mesh: a histological evaluation.

Objectives: The Ross procedure involves replacing a patient's diseased aortic valve with their own pulmonary valve. The most common failure mode is dilatation of the autograft. Various strategies to reinforce the autograft have been proposed.

Biomechanical evaluation of a personalized external aortic root support applied in the Ross procedure.

A commonly heard concern in the Ross procedure, where a diseased aortic valve is replaced by the patient's own pulmonary valve, is the possibility of pulmonary autograft dilatation. We performed a biomechanical investigation of the use of a personalized external aortic root support or exostent as a possibility for supporting the autograft. In ten sheep a short length of pulmonary artery was interposed in the descending aorta, serving as a simplified version of the Ross procedure.