Mitral regurgitation is the most common valvular insufficiency, affecting more than 10% of people older than 75 years old in the United States. This translates into approximately 4 million people suffering from significant mitral regurgitation and 250,000 new cases of severe mitral regurgitation every year. The objective of this thesis is to design and test a novel transcatheter mitral valve with in-stent artificial chordae tendineae that better reproduces the native mitral complex as well as studying the cruciality of the role of chordae tendineae as a part of mitral valve apparatus.
For this purpose, numerous valves were designed and tested under physiological conditions before the optimal design was obtained. In order to study vorticity fields, viscous energy dissipation, and mitral regurgitation, the data collected from PIV measurements containing velocity fields were post processed. Particle trajectory was also performed to trace the particles inside the ventricle, during systole.
Findings of this study show that addition of the artificial chordae leads to a better performance of the mitral valve in terms of leaflet coaptations. In addition to what has been said, presence of the artificial chordae leads to significant improvements in terms of flow patterns, vortex formation, viscous energy dissipation and mitral valve regurgitation compared to the case in which the chordae were removed.