Vortex interactions and fluid mixing in the brain: targeted drug delivery for intraventricular hemorrhage patients

Approximately 65,000 people experience intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) in the United States per year. The mortality rate of ICH is more than 50%, where nearly half of the patients cannot survive the first 24 hours. The standard of patient care technology on ICH treatment has not seen significant development within the last 20 years, until a recent invention of a dual lumen catheter IRRAflow which utilizes active fluid exchange. In this study, we employed an immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann method to evaluate the performance of the catheter in a patient specific 3-dimensional fluid-solid interaction model of the left lateral brain ventricle. We investigated the effectiveness of the active exchange mechanism by monitoring the irrigation of the stationary fluid inside the ventricle, vortex interactions, particle residence time, and dye simulation of the injected fluid. We discuss the chance of cloth formation using this delivery system, and compare it with clinical finding of IRRAflow in over 200 patients.