Investigation Longitudinal Assessment of Hemodynamic Endpoints in Predicting Arteriovenous Fistula Maturation

Arteriovenous fistula (AVF) nonmaturation is currently a sig-nificant clinical problem; however, themechanisms responsible for this have remained unanswered. Previous work by our group and others has suggested that anatomical configuration and the corresponding hemodynamic endpoints could have an important role in AVF remodeling. Thus, our goal was to assess the longitudinal (temporal) effect of wall shear stress (WSS) on remodeling process of AVFs with two different con-figurations. The hypothesis is that early assessment of hemody-namic endpoints such as temporal gradient ofWSSwill predict the maturation status of AVF at later time points. Two AVFs with curved (C-AVF) and straight (S-AVF) configurations were created between the femoral artery and vein of each pig. Three pigs were considered in this study and in total six AVF