Computational Simulation of Atherosclerosis Progression Associated with Blood Pressure in a 2-D Idealized Human Carotid Artery Model

Cardiovascular diseases are a known health threat with no respect for age. The need to understand the initiation and progress of the disease is expedient in proper diagnosis and management of the disease.

The work is targeted at simulating the effect of elevated blood pressure on the initiation and development of plaque over time concerning wall shear stress, WSS and plaque wall stress, and PWS.

Conditions such as blood velocity, pressure, and arterial wall conditions associated with blood flow in arteries, as well as patient-specific characterization related to these variables and conditions, were plugged into modified models in the COMSOL multiphysics software. The artery was modeled as an idealized 2-D carotid artery model.

Results showed that the WSS distribution with respect to changes with a blood pressure of 500 Pa gave the highest WSS value at the plaque neck and 1500 Pa gave the highest WSS value in the regions close to the plaque root. It was also observed that as the plaque size increased, the region experiencing severely high values for WSS also expanded.

It can be recommended that blood pressure monitoring is necessary to curb the attendant cardiovascular diseases associated with high blood pressure.