Prediction of the Blood Flow Through Stenosis in AVF for Hemodialysis

Failure of maturation of arteriovenous fistula (AVF) persists as a major source of desolation and lethality in hemodialysis patients. Stenosis in a vascular access circuit is the predominant cause of access dysfunction. This study is done using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with OpenFOAM to model the flow through an arteriovenous fistula to predict the functional significance of stenosis in the vascular access system. The modeling of stenosis is created in ICEM-CFD by varying the diameter and length of stenosis and analyzed it in the environment of OpenFOAM using the inlet flow velocity as the velocity of each linear time step of the pulse rate like 1.3, 1.5, 2.66 m/s, etc. and maintained the fixed outlet pressure as 100 mmHg. The CFD analysis helps to find the clinical relevance of stenosis in access dysfunction and standardize the intervention.