Computational analysis of heart valve growth and remodeling after the Ross procedure

During the Ross procedure, an aortic heart valve is replaced by a patient’s own pulmonary valve. The pulmonary autograft subsequently undergoes substantial growth and remodeling (G&R) due to its exposure to increased hemodynamic loads. In this study, we developed a homogenized constrained mixture model to understand the observed adaptation of the autograft leaflets in response to the changed hemodynamic environment. This model was based on the hypothesis that tissue G&R aims to preserve mechanical homeostasis for each tissue constituent. To model the Ross procedure, we simulated the exposure of a pulmonary valve to aortic pressure conditions and the subsequent G&R of the valve. Specifically, we investigated the effects of assuming either stress- or stretch-based mechanical homeostasis, the use of blood pressure control, and the effect of root dilation. With this model, we could explain different observations from published clinical studies, such as the increase in thickness, change in collagen organization, and change in tissue composition. In addition, we found that G&R based on stress-based homeostasis could better capture the observed changes in tissue composition than G&R based on stretch-based homeostasis, and that root dilation or blood pressure control can result in more leaflet elongation. Finally, our model demonstrated that successful adaptation can only occur when the mechanically induced tissue deposition is sufficiently larger than tissue degradation, such that leaflet thickening overrules leaflet dilation. In conclusion, our findings demonstrated that G&R based on mechanical homeostasis can capture the observed heart valve adaptation after the Ross procedure. Finally, this study presents a novel homogenized mixture model that can be used to investigate other cases of heart valve G&R as well.