title: Computational particle-haemodynamics analysis of liver radioembolization pretreatment as an actual treatment surrogate.
abstract: Liver radioembolization (RE) is a treatment option for patients with unresectable and chemorefractory primary and metastatic liver tumours. RE consists of intra-arterially administering via catheter radioactive microspheres that locally attack the tumours, sparing healthy tissue. Prior to RE, the standard practice is to conduct a treatment-mimicking pretreatment assessment via the infusion of99mTc-labelled macroaggregated albumin microparticles. The usefulness of this pretreatment has been debated in the literature, and thus, the aim of the present study is to shed light on this issue by numerically simulating the liver RE pretreatment and actual treatment particle-haemodynamics in a patient-specific hepatic artery under two different literature-based cancer scenarios and two different placements of a realistic end-hole microcatheter in the proper hepatic artery. The parameters that are analysed are the following: microagent quantity and size (accounting for RE pretreatment and treatment), catheter-tip position (near the proper hepatic artery bifurcation and away from it), and cancer burden (10% and 30% liver involvement). The conclusion that can be reached from the simulations is that when it comes to mimicking RE in terms of delivering particles to tumour-bearing segments, the catheter-tip position is much more important (because of the importance of local haemodynamic pattern alteration) than the infused microagents (i.e. quantity and size). Cancer burden is another important feature because the increase in blood flow rate to tumour-bearing segments increases the power to drag particles. These numerical simulation-based conclusions are in agreement with clinically observed events reported in the literature. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
authors.affiliation: Thermal and Fluids Engineering Division, Mechanical Department, Tecnun-University of Navarra, P° Manuel Lardizabal 13, 20018, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.
authors.forename: Jorge
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Aramburu
authors.affiliation: Thermal and Fluids Engineering Division, Mechanical Department, Tecnun-University of Navarra, P° Manuel Lardizabal 13, 20018, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.|Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Navarra (IdiSNA), Av. Pío XII 36, 31008, Pamplona, Spain.
authors.forename: Raúl
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Antón
authors.affiliation: Thermal and Fluids Engineering Division, Mechanical Department, Tecnun-University of Navarra, P° Manuel Lardizabal 13, 20018, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.
authors.forename: Alejandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rivas
authors.affiliation: Thermal and Fluids Engineering Division, Mechanical Department, Tecnun-University of Navarra, P° Manuel Lardizabal 13, 20018, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.
authors.forename: Juan Carlos
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Ramos
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Navarra (IdiSNA), Av. Pío XII 36, 31008, Pamplona, Spain.|Clínica Universidad de Navarra, Av. Pío XII 36, 31008, Pamplona, Spain.|Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Enfermedades Hepáticas y Digestivas (CIBEREHD), Av. Pío XII 36, 31008, Pamplona, Spain.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sangro
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Navarra (IdiSNA), Av. Pío XII 36, 31008, Pamplona, Spain.|Clínica Universidad de Navarra, Av. Pío XII 36, 31008, Pamplona, Spain.
authors.forename: José Ignacio
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: Bilbao
mesh_terms: D004621:Embolization, Therapeutic; D006439:Hemodynamics; D006499:Hepatic Artery / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008102:Liver Circulation / Q000502:physiology*; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000628:therapy*; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D047368:Tumor Burden
keywords: computational fluid-particle dynamics; hepatic artery; liver cancer; pretreatment; radioembolization