Arteriovenous Fistulas Created with the Help of Personalised Blood Flow Simulations: Clinical Outcomes of a Randomised Controlled Trial.

Flow dysfunction is a common complication of arteriovenous fistulas (AVF) for haemodialysis, with low blood flow resulting in maturation failure and high blood flow potentially giving rise to distal ischaemia and high output heart failure. To improve the clinical outcome of vascular access surgery, a personalised computational model predicting post-operative blood flow for different AVF configurations has been developed. 1 Huberts W. Bode A.S. Kroon W. Planken R.N. Tordoir J.H. van de Vosse F.N. et al. A pulse wave propagation model to support decision-making in vascular access planning in the clinic. Med Eng Phys. 2012; 34: 233-248 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (70) Google Scholar This physics based model uses patient specific pre-operative blood vessel diameters and blood velocities measured with duplex ultrasound to calculate post-operative flow for radiocephalic, brachiocephalic, and brachiobasilic AVFs.