Simulation analysis of airflow alteration in the trachea following the vascular ring surgery based on CT images using the computational fluid dynamics method

This study presents a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to simulate the three-dimensional airflow in the trachea before and after the vascular ring surgery (VRS). The simulation was based on CT-scan images of the patients with the vascular ring diseases. The surface geometry of the tracheal airway was reconstructed using triangular mesh by the Amira software package. The unstructured tetrahedral volume meshes were generated by the ANSYS ICEM CFD software package. The airflow in the tracheal airway was solved by the ESI CFD-ACE+ software package. Numerical simulation shows that the pressure drops across the tracheal stenosis before and after the surgery were 0.1789 and 0.0967 Pa, respectively, with the inspiratory inlet velocity 0.1 m/s. Meanwhile, the improvement percentage by the surgery was 45.95%. In the expiratory phase, by contrast, the improvement percentage was 40.65%. When the inspiratory velocity reached 1 m/s, the pressure drop became 4.988 Pa and the improvement percentage was 43.32%. Simulation results further show that after treatment the pressure drop in the tracheal airway was significantly decreased, especially for low inspiratory and expiratory velocities. The CFD method can be applied to quantify the airway pressure alteration and to evaluate the treatment outcome of the vascular ring surgery under different respiratory velocities.