Helical Flow in Healthy and Diseased Patient-specific Coronary Bifurcations

Helical flow (HF) exists in healthy and diseased coronary bifurcations and was found to have a protective atherosclerotic vascular effect in other vessels. However, the role of HF in patient-specific human coronary arteries still needs further study, and is therefore the objective of this study in both healthy and diseased bifurcations. Computational studies were conducted on 16 patient-specific coronary bifurcations, including eight healthy and eight identical cases with idealized narrowing to represent disease. In general, higher HF intensity may have a favorable effect as it corelated to the reduction of the percentage vessel area exposed to adverse time averaged wall shear stress (TAWSS%) in both healthy and diseased models. The HF intensity and distribution of each model varies due to the complex shape of patient-specific models. The presence of disease appears to have an important impact on the downstream HF patterns and the TAWSS distributions. Clinical Relevance— By understanding the relationship between HF and hemodynamics, HF may be used as a predictor for the formation and progression of atherosclerotic plaque in coronary arteries instead of near-wall WSS measures, which can be determined with higher accuracy in vivo.