Abstract
Introduction: Aortic coarctation is one of the most difficult cardiac defects to diagnose before birth, and it accounts for 8% of congenital heart diseases. Antenatal diagnosis is crucial for early treatment of the neonate and to decrease the risk of morbidity and mortality; however the fetal hemodynamic changes are not fully understood and current imaging methods are limited to accurately diagnosis this congenital defect. Objective: We propose to use a lumped model of the fetal circulation to provide insights into the hemodynamic changes in fetuses with aortic coarctation, and thus helping to improve its diagnosis. Methods: To achieve this goal a patient-specific lumped model of the fetal circulation was implemented in OpenCOR, including the modeling of different types and degrees of aortic coarctation. A parametric study of degree and type of coarctation was performed, where blood flow distribution, cerebroplacental ratio, pressure drop over the coarctation and left ventricular pressure were quantified. Results: Obvious changes in the fetal hemodynamics were observed only from 80% of coarctation, corresponding to the clinically used cut-off for pressure drop of 20 mmHg. Furthermore, the observed hemodynamic changes were different depending on the location and degree of the coarctation.
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Acknowledgments
This study was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grant TIN2014-52923-R; Maria de Maeztu Units of Excellence Programme - MDM-2015-0502), FEDER and the European Union Horizon 2020 Programme for Research and Innovation, under grant agreement No. 642676 (CardioFunXion).
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Giménez Mínguez, P. et al. (2017). Assessment of Haemodynamic Remodeling in Fetal Aortic Coarctation Using a Lumped Model of the Circulation. In: Pop, M., Wright, G. (eds) Functional Imaging and Modelling of the Heart. FIMH 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10263. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59448-4_45
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59448-4_45
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