Key result
Larger carotid bifurcation angles alter oxygen flux, driving extreme hypoxia at the sinus outer wall.
Computational fluid dynamics modeling demonstrates that low oxygen wall flux at the carotid sinus, a potential risk factor for atherosclerosis, is highly sensitive to changes in the ICA:ECA volumetric flow ratio.
May link bifurcation geometry to carotid hypoxia risk; hypothesis-generating for atherosclerosis, needs human validation.
The carotid bifurcation is found to be a major site of Atherosclerotic plaque formation and intima-media thickening. In the present study, oxygen mass transfer in the human carotid bifurcation has been numerically investigated, focusing on effects of the bifurcation angle and the volumetric flow ratio between the internal carotid artery (ICA) and the external carotid artery (ECA) on the magnitudes and distributions of the oxygen wall flux. Three-dimensional models of bifurcations with two different bifurcation angles mimicking the real bifurcation anatomy were constructed to perform simulations of steady blood flow under the wall boundary condition of a constant oxygen concentration. Results reveal that the axial flow separation at the outer common-internal carotid wall can significantly alter the distribution and the magnitude of the oxygen wall flux, depending strongly on the bifurcation angle. The magnitude of the lowest Sherwood (Sh) number (non-dimensional oxygen wall flux) at the ICA sinus, where Atherosclerotic plaque is likely to develop, is sensitive to the change in the value of the volumetric flow ratio rather than the change in the bifurcation anatomy.
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Shigeru Tada (2010) studied Atherosclerosis (computational model of carotid bifurcation). Variation in bifurcation angle and ICA/ECA volumetric flow ratio was evaluated on Oxygen wall flux (Sherwood number) and Wall Shear Stress (WSS) distribution. Variations in carotid bifurcation angle and internal-to-external carotid artery flow ratio significantly alter the distribution and magnitude of oxygen wall flux, with extreme hypoxia occurring at the sinus outer wall in models with larger bifurcation angles.
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