Numerical Investigation of Blood Flow in a Sequential Aorto-Coronary Bypass Graft Model

Sequential grafting technique is adopted when one or more of the coronary arteries are blocked or severely narrowed. The objective of this study was to understand the influence of the anastomosis configuration on the blood flow in the three-dimensional coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) model. The finite volume technique was employed to model the 3-D blood flow pattern to determine the velocity and WSS distributions. This study presents the flow-field distributions of the velocity and WSS at two instances of the cardiac cycle, one during start of ejection (t=0.0 s) and the other during early diastole (t=0.32 s). Our results reveal that maximum wall shear stress was observed at the toe of the end-to side anstomosis. The smooth flow patterns observed in the side-to-side anastomosis region resulted in an almost uniform variation of WSS. The present work indicates that a side-to-side anastomosis would result in a better graft patency than an end-to-side anastomosis