Tridimensional Simulations Of Blood Flow Through Modified Blalock-Taussig Pulmonary Shunts.

Abstract

Systemic pulmonary procedure is a palliative surgical technique and is indicated to
patients with congenital heart disease with reduction of the arterial blood flow in the
pulmonary arteries. In this surgical procedure, known as Modified Blalock-Taussig Shunts,
prosthetic graft material is interposed between the subclavian artery and the pulmonary
artery with purpose to increase blood flow in pulmonary artery. The modified Blalock-
Taussig Shunt can be performed on either side, and subclavian blood supply to the arm is
preserved. Kinking of the subclavian artery is not a problem, but distortion of the pulmonary
artery may still occur with the child's growth. Early survival of the Modified Blalock-Taussig
palliation is dependent of pulmonary and systemic flows what is directly connected with
geometric factors involved in this surgery. In this article, a tridimensional geometric model,
employing a Streamline Upwind/Petrov-Galerkin formulation with trilinear lagrangean finite
elements, was created to approximate the blood flow through systemic pulmonary shunts, in
order to study the effects of the shunt’s geometry (angle, diameter) and pulsatility of the flow.