Treatment of the aortic coarctation: Prediction of the hemodynamic impact

Aortic coarctation (CoA) accounts for approximately 10% of congenital heart diseases 1. CoA causing high pressure gradient can be successfully treated surgical or catheter-based. Long-term results, however, revealed decreased life expectancy associated with abnormal hemodynamics 1. To develop a next-generation personalized diagnostic-prognostic tools allowing treatment optimization and thus to improve life expectance, the innovative combination of imaging science, biofluid mechanics, and computer modeling is necessary. Patient-specific computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models of the CoA based on MRI data were created to analyze pre- and post-treatment hemodynamics with a focus on pressure gradient.