Association of wall shear stress with intracranial aneurysm rupture: systematic review and meta-analysis

To evaluate the relationship between wall shear stress (WSS) magnitude and cerebral aneurysm rupture and provide new insight into the disparate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) findings concerning the role of WSS in intracranial aneurysm (IA) rupture. A systematic electronic database (PubMed, Medline, Springer, and EBSCO) search was conducted for all accessible published articles up to July 1, 2016, with no restriction on the publication year. Abstracts, full-text manuscripts, and the reference lists of retrieved articles were analyzed. Random effects meta-analysis was used to pool the complication rates across studies. Twenty-two studies containing CFD data on 1257 patients with aneurysms were included in the analysis. A significantly higher rate of low WSS (0–1.5 Pa) was found in ruptured aneurysms (odds ratio [OR] 2.17; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.73–2.62). The pooled analyses across 14 studies with low WSS showed significantly lower mean WSS (0.64 vs. 1.4 Pa) (p = 0.037) in the ruptured group. This meta-analysis provides evidence that decreased local WSS may be an important predictive parameter of IA rupture.