In vitro study of blood flow in aortic valve and Valsalva sinus

One of the known cure for ascending aortic aneurysm is vascular grafting surgery using composite graft. But almost conservative grafts don't have Valsalva sinus, and the influence of existence of Valsalva sinus isn't clarified. In order to understand effect of Valsalva sinuses, some realistic models of aortic valve were manufactured. In this study, we have produced modeled aortic valves with three-dimensional modeling machine, and have investigated the effect of the Valsalva sinus and leading angle of coronary artery on blood flow and the flow field in the Valsalva sinus. As the result, displacement of the valve leaflet of which the model has Valsalva sinus is smaller than that of model without Valsalva sinus.