A numerical study on the effect of side hole number and arrangement in venous cannulae

Insertion of cannulae into vessels may apply non-physiological load and stress on blood cells, such that adenosine diphosphate may increase and result in hemolysis. Authors used the computational method to simulate the blood flow inside of the cannula. We limited the research to within the drainage cannulae. Nine different cannulae categorized by the number of side holes of 4, 12, and 20, and also categorized by the array type as staggered array, in-line array, and alternative in-line array were studied and compared to the cannulae with no side holes by using computational fluid dynamics. We evaluated the flow rate, the wall shear stress, and the shear rate, and compared them with one another to estimate the effect of the side holes. The flow rate is not proportional to the number of the side holes. However, larger number of side holes can reduce the mean shear rate.