RUM2021 RUM2021-EuroMed Politecnico-di-Milano Structures Abaqus @AC CustomerPresentation
During our 2021 EuroMed RUM Alessandro Caimi presented "Treatment of Pediatric Severe Mitral Valve Replacement Stenosis with the Melody Prosthetic Valve: Biomechanical Mechanisms Underlying Long-Term Implant Failure". Alessandro's presentation talks about mitral stenosis, which is a frequent congenital condition characterized by structural defects of the valve leaflets.
In pediatric patients, the standard treatment consists of the replacement of the valve with mechanical/ bioprosthetic devices or with autograft. However, re-replacement is inevitable due to patient growth. Hence, the surgical implant of an oversized stent-mounted valve, which can be percutaneously expanded after surgery, was proposed. Though this procedure seems to be promising, implant durability can be hampered by leaflet damage. Numerical simulations may assess the biomechanical impact of both device shrinking and left ventricle in vivo motion on the implanted device. The proposed finite element numerical framework, developed in ABAQUS/Explicit, proved able to couple a realistic numerical model of the inserted stent-mounted valve with the kinematics of the left ventricle, extracted from 3D ultrasound data, elucidating the effect of the procedure on the device. Our results suggest that valve undersizing dominates over annular dynamics in inducing biomechanically driven leaflet damage. This approach, if further tested, may support the improvement of the surgical procedure.
Alessandro Caimi obtained his master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2015, in collaboration with the Artificial Heart Lab of The Penn State University. In 2019 Alessandro obtained his Ph.D. with a work focused on cardiovascular modeling, with a particular emphasis on the development of image-based approaches for the in vivo assessment of patient-specific biomechanical variables. He collaborates with Italian and extra-UE clinical partners and with international universities for the design of new strategies for the planning of percutaneous treatments and for the development of new surgical procedures in patients with severe cardiovascular congenital diseases. He is now participating in the development of a new biohybrid vascular prosthesis for patients undergoing hemodialysis. Furthermore, he has been involved in consultancy activities for medical and extra-medical companies.
Please see below a replay of his presentation held at the EuroMed SIMULIA Regional User Meeting 2021. Please feel free to comment or raise your question here.
