Boundary conditions of patient-specific fluid dynamics modelling of cavopulmonary connections: possible adaptation of pulmonary resistances results in a critical issue for a virtual surgical planning

Cavopulmonary connections are surgical procedures used to treat a variety of complex congenital cardiac defects. Virtual pre-operative planning based on in silico patient-specific modelling might become a powerful tool in the surgical decision-making process. For this purpose, three-dimensional models can be easily developed from medical imaging data to investigate individual haemodynamics. However, the definition of patient-specific boundary conditions is still a crucial issue. The present study describes an approach to evaluate the vascular impedance of the right and left lungs on the basis of pre-operative clinical data and numerical simulations. Computational fluid dynamics techniques are applied to a patient with a bidirectional cavopulmonary anastomosis, who later underwent a total cavopulmonary connection (TCPC). Multi-scale models describing the surgical region and the lungs are adopted, while the flow rates measured in the venae cavae are used at the model inlets. Pre-operative and post-operative conditions are investigated; namely, TCPC haemodynamics, which are predicted using patient-specific pre-operative boundary conditions, indicates that the pre-operative balanced lung resistances are not compatible with the TCPC measured flows, suggesting that the pulmonary vascular impedances changed individually after the surgery. These modifications might be the consequence of adaptation to the altered pulmonary blood flows.