Endovascular repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms faces some adverse outcomes, such as kinks or endoleaks related to incomplete stent apposition, which are difficult to predict and which restrain its use although it is less invasive than open surgery. Finite element simulations could help to predict and anticipate possible complications biomechanically induced, thus enhancing practitioners' stent-graft sizing and surgery planning, and giving indications on patient eligibility to endovascular repair. The purpose of this work is therefore to develop a new numerical methodology to predict stent-graft final deployed shapes after surgery. The simulation process was applied on three clinical cases, using preoperative scans to generate patient-specific vessel models. The marketed devices deployed during the surgery, consisting of a main body and one or more iliac limbs or extensions, were modeled and their deployment inside the corresponding patient aneurysm was simulated. The numerical results were compared to the actual deployed geometry of the stent-grafts after surgery that was extracted from postoperative scans. We observed relevant matching between simulated and actual deployed stent-graft geometries, especially for proximal and distal stents outside the aneurysm sac which are particularly important for practitioners. Stent locations along the vessel centerlines in the three simulations were always within a few millimeters to actual stents locations. This good agreement between numerical results and clinical cases makes finite element simulation very promising for preoperative planning of endovascular repair.
The rate of post-operative complications is the main drawback of endovascular repair, a technique used to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms. Complex anatomies, featuring short aortic necks and high vessel tortuosity for instance, have been proved likely prone to these complications. In this context, practitioners could benefit, at the preoperative planning stage, from a tool able to predict the post-operative position of the stent-graft, to validate their stent-graft sizing and anticipate potential complications. In consequence, the aim of this work is to prove the ability of a numerical simulation methodology to reproduce accurately the shapes of stent-grafts, with a challenging design, deployed inside tortuous aortic aneurysms. Stent-graft module samples were scanned by X-ray microtomography and subjected to mechanical tests to generate finite-element models. Two EVAR clinical cases were numerically reproduced by simulating stent-graft models deployment inside the tortuous arterial model generated from patient pre-operative scan. In the same manner, an in vitro stent-graft deployment in a rigid polymer phantom, generated by extracting the arterial geometry from the preoperative scan of a patient, was simulated to assess the influence of biomechanical environment unknowns in the in vivo case. Results were validated by comparing stent positions on simulations and post-operative scans. In all cases, simulation predicted stents deployed locations and shapes with an accuracy of a few millimetres. The good results obtained in the in vitro case validated the ability of the methodology to simulate stent-graft deployment in very tortuous arteries and led to think proper modelling of biomechanical environment could reduce the few local discrepancies found in the in vivo case. In conclusion, this study proved that our methodology can achieve accurate simulation of stent-graft deployed shape even in tortuous patient specific aortic aneurysms and may be potentially helpful to help practitioners plan their intervention.
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