Overlapping Bare-Metal Stents Strategy in Treatment of Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm: A Numerical Study

To investigate the hemodynamic performance of overlapping bare-metal stents treatment of thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAA), three simplified geometric models, named, no stent, with one single stent and two overlapped stents were studied and compared in terms of velocity profiles and wall shear stress (WSS) distributions by means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The results showed that overlapping bare-metal stents intervention significantly decreased the WSS and the blood flow velocity in the aneurysm sac, meanwhile the vortex in the sac became weaker and weaker. The results indicated that overlapping stents intervention may effectively isolate the thoracic aortic aneurysm, protecting it from rupture. In conclusion, overlapping bare-metal stents may serve a similar purpose to that of the multilayer flow modulator (MFM) manufactured by Cardiatis SA (Isnes, Belgium).