Off-label in-silico flow diverter performance assessment in posterior communicating artery aneurysms

BACKGROUND: The posterior communicating artery (PComA) is among the most common intracranial aneurysm locations, but flow diverter (FD) treatment with the widely used pipeline embolization device (PED) remains an off-label treatment that is not well understood. PComA aneurysm flow diversion is complicated by the presence of fetal posterior circulation (FPC), which has an estimated prevalence of 4-29% and is more common in people of black (11.5%) than white (4.9%) race. We present the FD-PComA in-silico trial (IST) into FD treatment performance in PComA aneurysms. ISTs use computational modeling and simulation in cohorts of virtual patients to evaluate medical device performance.

METHODS: We modeled FD treatment in 118 virtual patients with 59 distinct PComA aneurysm anatomies, using computational fluid dynamics to assess post-treatment outcome. Boundary conditions were prescribed to model the effects of non-fetal and FPC, allowing for comparison between these subgroups.

RESULTS: FD-PComA predicted reduced treatment success in FPC patients, with an average aneurysm space and time-averaged velocity reduction of 67.8% for non-fetal patients and 46.5% for fetal patients (P <0.001). Space and time-averaged wall shear stress on the device surface was 29.2 Pa averaged across fetal patients and 23.5 Pa across non-fetal (P <0.05) patients, suggesting FD endothelialization may be hindered in FPC patients. Morphological variables, such as the size and shape of the aneurysm and PComA size, did not affect the treatment outcome.

CONCLUSIONS: FD-PComA had significantly lower treatment success rates in PComA aneurysm patients with FPC. We suggest that FPC patients should be treated with an alternative to single PED flow diversion.