Experimental Study of Approaches for Treatment of Aortic Arch Aneurysm

Aortic arch aneurysm is a complex aortic pathology which requires one or more aortic arch vessels. In this study we explore the three currently available treatment approaches; Surgery Graft, hybrid Stent-Graft and chimney Stent Graft, from a hemodynamic point of view. The study includes combined experimental and numerical approaches. This paper describes the experimental study which involved reproducing four aortic models, representing typical anatomical geometries of aneurysmatic arch, surgery, hybrid and chimney endovascular techniques. The experiments were carried out using a visualization and PIV system for the flow pattern analysis and a mock circulatory loop (MCL) system to enable testing the different approaches under systemic circulations of a normal human. Preliminary results delineate the poor hemodynamics of the aortic arch aneurysm and present the hemodynamic advantages of the Surgery technique. Out of the two minimally-invasive procedures, the hybrid procedure clearly exhibits better hemodynamic performances. The experimental results are compared with the numerical simulations and validates them.