Journal of biomechanical engineering
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While many congenital heart defects can be treated without significant long term sequelae, some achieve successful palliation as their definitive endpoints. The single-ventricle defect is one such defect and leaves the child with only one operational ventricle, requiring the systemic and the pulmonary circulations to be placed in series through several operations performed during early childhood. Numerical simulations may be used to investigate these hemodynamic conditions and their relation to post-operative sequelae; however, they rely heavily on boundary condition prescription. ⋯ To increase the precision of such indicators, mean flow split between right and left lungs needs to be measured with more accuracy with higher priority than refining the model of how the flow is distributed on average among the smaller branches. Although ± 10% flow split imprecision seemed reasonable in terms of patient comparison, this study suggests that the common practice of imposing a right pulmonary artery/left pulmonary artery flow split of 55%/45% when performing patient specific simulations should be avoided. This study constitutes a first step towards understanding the hemodynamic differences between pre- and post Fontan surgery, predicting these differences, and evaluating surgical outcomes based on preoperative data.