Blocked vessels

Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) generally occurs at the site of mild to moderate coronary artery stenosis.

Recently, this concept became a matter of speculation because significant rather than moderate coronary artery stenosis has been postulated to be the main substrate of plaque rupture.

Unfortunately, the main pathophysiological mechanism underneath the switch from mild to significant stenosis as the main determinant of AMI has not yet been clarified. From a rheological point of view, blood flow turbulence has been suggested as one of the main causes of plaque formation, growth, rupture and subsequent thrombotic occlusion.

CFD analysis can be used to investigate how cavitation, could influence the coronary artery plaque rupture depending of the degree of local stenosis.

MPflow is the first multiphase code with on-the-fly machine-accelerated algorithms.

Results demonstrated that cavitation occurred in coronary artery when a concentric stenosis ranging between 50% to 75% was present. This phenomenon was explained to occur when the fluid pressure was lower than the vapor pressure (to form and grow the bubbles) and recovered to above the vapour pressure inducing a subsequent implosion of bubbles.