Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common type of arrhythmia, which undermines cardiac function. Atrial fibrillation is a multi-facet malady and it may occur as a result of other diseases or it may trigger other problems. One of the main complications of AF is stroke due to the possibility of clot formation inside the atrium. However, the possibility of stroke occurrence due to the AF and the location from which an embolus dispatches are subject of debate. Another hypothesis about the embolus formation during AF is thrombus formation in aorta and carotid arteries, embolus detachment and its movement. To investigate the possibility of the latter postulation, the current work suggests a parametric study to quantify the sensitivity of aortic flow to four common AF traits including lack of atrial kick, atrial remodelling, left ventricle systolic dysfunction, and high frequency fibrillation. The simulation was carried out by coupling several in-house codes and ANSYS-CFX module. The results reveal that AF traits lower flow rate at left ventricular outflow tract, which in general lowers blood perfusion to systemic, cerebral and coronary circulations. Consequently, it leads to endothelial cell activation potential (ECAP) increase and variation of flow structure that both suggest predisposed areas to atherogenesis and thrombus formation in different regions in ascending aorta, aortic arch and descending thoracic aorta.

Graft failure is currently a major concern for medical practitioners in treating Peripheral Vascular Disease (PVD) and Coronary Artery Disease (CAD). It is now widely accepted that unfavourable haemodynamic conditions play an essential role in the formation and development of intimal hyperplasia, which is the main cause of graft failure. This paper uses Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to conduct a parametric study to enhance the design and performance of a novel prosthetic graft, which utilises internal ridge(s) to induce spiral flow. This design is primarily based on the identification of the blood flow as spiral in the whole arterial system and is believed to improve the graft longevity and patency rates at distal graft anastomoses. Four different design parameters were assessed in this work and the trailing edge orientation of the ridge was identified as the most important parameter to induce physiological swirling flow, while the height of the ridge also significantly contributed to the enhanced performance of this type of graft. Building on these conclusions, an enhanced configuration of spiral graft is proposed and compared against conventional and spiral grafts to reaffirm its potential benefits.

In the present work, numerical simulations were conducted for a typical end-to-side distal graft anastomosis to assess the effects of inducing secondary flow, which is believed to remove unfavourable flow environment. Simulations were carried out for four models, generated based on two main features of 'out-of-plane helicity' and 'spiral ridge' in the grafts as well as their combination. Following a qualitative comparison against in vitro data, various mean flow and hemodynamic parameters were compared and the results showed that helicity is significantly more effective in inducing swirling flow in comparison to a spiral ridge, while their combination could be even more effective. In addition, the induced swirling flow was generally found to be increasing the wall shear stress and reducing the flow stagnation and particle residence time within the anastomotic region and the host artery, which may be beneficial to the graft longevity and patency rates. Finally, a parametric study on the spiral ridge geometrical features was conducted, which showed that the ridge height and the number of spiral ridges have significant effects on inducing swirling flow, and revealed the potential of improving the efficiency of such designs.