Drug dispersion for single- and multi-lumen catheters

Abstract

This study presents a comparison of the drug dispersion capability of various catheters which can be used to inject medication or stem cells into the arterial system. The study was carried out by the use of numerical simulation so that various geometric and physical operating parameters could be investigated. The blood was modeled with a power-law viscosity and the medication had two levels of viscosity to represent upper and lower bounds expected in practice. Two different medication flowrates were also incorporated into the study. Finally, the impact of an inflated balloon up-stream of the injection was studied. The artery was simply modeled as a straight circular tube with the catheters concentrically positioned. It was found that in some cases, dispersion was improved by use of a multi-lumen device, particularly when an upstream balloon was employed to regulate blood flow and drug residence time. In other cases, the dispersion from the single-lumen device was superior. Another finding was that the multi-lumen device had a reduced hydraulic resistance to blood flow, compared to the single-lumen device when an upstream balloon was inflated.