Hemodynamics in human uterine arteries: Modeling and computational fluid dynamics calculations

Preeclampsia affects 2% of pregnant women and is one of the main causes of prenatal maternal mortality and morbidity. Recent studies with two-dimensional echocardiography have shown that PE is characterized by a marked reduction on maternal cardiac output and increased peripheral resistance. However, studies on the maternal hemodynamic adaptation during PE and the available information about central maternal hemodynamics are scarce. The main purpose of this study is to develop a computational model, in order to obtain relevant hemodynamic parameters of the maternal circulation, formed by the common iliac, the internal and external iliac and the uterine arteries. The first stage of this work consists on creating the geometric model. This model require many approximations and generalizations in order to optimize the numerical calculation of the hemodynamic parameters by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), but it is the best representation of the morphology and anatomy of the maternal circulatory system. In order to represents the maternal system, four different models were created, to simulate no-pregnant women and 21, 30 and 36 weeks of pregnancy. The numerical simulations performed by ANSYS®-Fluent software correlate the main hemodynamic parameters, such as flow, velocity and arterial pressure, with the variation of uterine morphological data. A variation on the velocity and pressure was verified on each geometrical model, and their corresponding inlet flow.