Past and future of blood damage modelling in a view of translational research

Abstract

Anatomic pathologies such as stenosed or regurgitating heart valves and artificial organs such as heart assist devices or heart valve prostheses are associated with non-physiological flow. This regime is associated with regions of spatially high-velocity gradients, high-velocity and/or pressure fluctuations as well as neighbouring regions with stagnant flow associated with high residence time. These hemodynamic conditions cause destruction and/or activation of blood components and their accumulation in regions with high residence time. The development of next-generation artificial organs, which allow long-term patient care by reducing adverse events and improve quality of life, requires the development of blood damage models serving as a cost function for device optimization. We summarized the studies underlining the key findings with subsequent elaboration of the requirements for blood damage models as well as a decision tree based on the classification of existing blood damage models. The four major classes are Lagrangian or Eulerian approaches with stress- or strain-based blood damage. Key challenges were identified and future steps towards the translation of blood damage models into the device development pipeline were formulated. The integration of blood damage caused by turbulence into models as well as in vitro and in vivo validation of models remain the major challenges for future developments. Both require the development of novel experimental setups to provide reliable and well-documented experimental data.