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Intracranial aneurysms and artery stenosis are vascular diseases with different pathophysiological characteristics. However, although unusual, aneurysms may coexist in up to 5% of patients with stenotic plaque, according to a previous study. Another study showed that incidental detection of cerebral aneurysm in the same cerebral circulation as the stenotic plaque was less than 2%. Patients with concomitant carotid artery stenosis and unruptured intracranial aneurysms pose a difficult management decision for the physician. Case reports showed patients who died due to aneurysm rupture months after endarterectomy but before aneurysm clipping, while others did not show any change in the aneurysm after plaque removal, having optimum outcome after aneurysm coiling. The purpose of this study is to investigate the intraaneurysmal hemodynamic changes before and after treatment of stenotic plaque. Idealized models were constructed with different stenotic grade, distance and relative position to the aneurysm. Digital removal of the stenotic plaque was performed in the reconstructed model of a patient with both pathologies. Computational fluid dynamic simulations were performed using a finite element method approach. Blood velocity field and hemodynamic forces were recorded and analyzed. Changes in the flow patterns and wall shear stress values and distributions were observed in both ideal and image-based models. Detailed investigation of wall shear stress distributions in patients with both pathologies is required to make the best management decision.

It is widely accepted that complexity in the flow pattern at the anterior communicating artery (AComA) is associated with the high rate of aneurysm formation in that location observed in large studies. A previous computational hemodynamic study showed a possible association between high maximum intraaneurysmal wall shear stress (WSS) at the systolic peak with rupture in a cohort of AComA aneurysms. In another study it was observed a connection between location of aneurysm blebs and regions of high WSS in models where blebs were virtually removed. However, others reported associations between low WSS and either rupture or blister formation. The purpose of this work is to study associations between hemodynamic patterns and AComA aneurysm initiation by comparing hemodynamics in the aneurysm and the normal model where the aneurysm was computationally removed. Vascular models of both right and left circulation were independently reconstructed from three-dimensional rotational angiography images using deformable models, and fused using a surface merging algorithm. The geometric models were then used to generate high-quality volumetric finite element grids of tetrahedra with an advancing front technique. For each patient, the second anatomical model was created by digitally removing the aneurysm. It was iteratively achieved by applying a Laplacian smoothing filter and remeshing the surface. Finite element blood flow numerical simulations were performed. It was observed that aneurysms initiated in regions of high and moderate WSS in the counterpart normal models. Adjacent or close to those regions, low WSS portions of the arterial wall were not affected by the disease.