Despite successful implantation of St. Jude Medical bileaflet mechanical heart valves, red blood cell lysis and thrombogenic complications associated with these types of valves are yet to be addressed. In our previous study, we proposed an elliptic housing where 10% ovality was applied to the housing of St. Jude Medical valves. Our preliminary results suggested that the overall hemodynamic performance of St. Jude Medical valves improved in both the closing and opening phases. In this study, we evaluated the hemodynamics around the leaflets in the opening phase using a more sophisticated computational platform, computational fluid dynamics. Results suggested both lower shear stress and wall shear stress values and an overall improved hemodynamic performance in the proposed design. This improvement is characterized by lower values of shear stress and wall shear stress in the regions downstream of the leaflets, lower pressure drop across the valve and smaller recirculation zones in the sinuses areas. The proposed design may open a new chapter in the concept of design and hemodynamic improvement of the next generation of mechanical heart valves.
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