• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.38 no.12
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• pp.971-974
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• 2014

A ventricular assist device (VAD) is used for bridge to heart transplantation and heart diseases. Knowing the status of a pneumatic pulsatile VAD when implanting it into the body is important: when the velocity of blood flow through the VAD is slow, a thrombus may occur, and thrombosis can be fatal to a patient. In order to determine the state of a VAD, various sensors need to be implanted. Because this introduces the risk of infection and difficulties with sensor management, we developed a method for estimating the state of a VAD indirectly via the pressure in an air tube that can be measured in vitro. We compared the measured values to in vitro experimental results. The estimated and measured values showed some errors, but the accuracy can be improved by refining the estimation process to minimize the risk of infection.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.11
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• pp.1191-1198
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• 2011

The use of a ventricular assist device (VAD) can raise the one-year survival rate without cardiac transplantation from 25% to 52%. However, malfunction of the VAD system causes 6% of VAD patients' deaths, which could possibly be avoided through the development of new VADs in which VAD malfunctions do not affect the patient's heart movement or hemodynamic state. A conventional VAD has an impeller or vane for propelling blood that can allow blood to regurgitate when the propelling force is weaker than the aortic pressure. In this paper, we developed a new pulsatile conduit-shaped VAD that has two valves. This device removes the possibility of blood regurgitation and has a small stationary area even when the pumping force is extremely weak. We estimated the characteristics of the device by measuring the outflow and the pressure of the pump in in-vitro and in-vivo experiments.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.29 no.7
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• pp.689-699
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• 1996

An animal experiment was designed for the evaluation of in vivo performance of the newly developed electrohydraulic type ventricular assist device and its influence on the left ventricular function during pal- satile left ventricular assist. Eight adult sheep were incorporated into the study and data were collected from seven sheep. Total as- sist time ranged from 69 minutes to 7 days. The performance of the device was satisfactory both in asyn- chr nous and synchronous mode within the range of given native heart rate. More than 4 liters of device output could be reached within the range of normal left atral pressure without development of negative pressure in the left atrium. Moderate to severe degree of hemolysis was noted as evidenced by significant increase of plasma free hemoglobin level after 3 days of left ventricular support along with the presence of the small amount of thrombi around the floating disc type polymer valve apparatus reflecting that further study and refinement of the device need to be done in regard of biocompatibility and thromboresistance. The hemodynamics showed increase in heart rate (p < 0.05), cardiac output and left ventricular minute work (p < 0.05) after placement of the device at the flow rate of 2.0∼2.5 Llmin. The left atrial pressure, left ventricular pressure and LV dpldt were decreased after the device placement(p < 0.05). The endocardial viability ratio and oxygen contents of the mixed ven us blood and coronary venous blood were all increased (p < 0.05) after the device placement suggesting effective unloading of the left ventricle was accomplished. The myocardial perfusion was thought improved in synchronous counterpulsation as suggested by sig- nificant increase in endocardial viability ratio and coronary venous blood oxygen content in synchronous assist mode comparing with asynchronous mode.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.119-124
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• 2014

A Ventricular assist device (VAD) is one of the most efficient treatments to raise the survivability of the end stage heart failure patient. However, some of LVAD patients have died for the failures and improper control of LVAD. To detect critical dangers in LVAD, the monitoring methods of LVAD outflow have been requested, because it can be affected by patient's hemodynamic states and abnormal conditions of LVAD. In the case of an external pulsatile LVAD, the air movement through the air line can be used to estimate LVAD outflow. In this study, the air movement in the air-line of the extracorporeal pulsatile LVAD was measured with a differential pressure sensor between different points. The precise estimation of air movement could be achieved by additional measurement of air pressure. In a series of in-vitro experiments, the LVAD outflow were changed according to the afterload of LVAD and the differential pressure of LVAD didn't have close correlation with the LVAD outflow that were measured with an ultrasonic flowmeter at the same time. However, new precise estimation with the data from differential pressure and one point pressure in the air-line showed higher correlations with LVAD outflow.