Pulsatile flow through a centrifugal blood pump with magnetic bearing used for left ventricular assistance

• Grant number: 13/18411-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: November 01, 2013
• End date: August 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Biomedical Engineering - Medical Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Chi Nan Pai
• Grantee: Carolina Kohutek
• Host Institution: Escola Politécnica (EP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The increasing demand of heart transplantations is not supplied by the number of heart donors. The long waiting time for the transplantation of the organ creates the need of an artificial device to mimic the heart function for patients with heart failure. One of the solutions is to use ventricular assist devices (VAD). Between all types of VADs there are the centrifugal pumps using magnetic bearings, which exhibit higher durability and are less damaging to the organism, when compared to other devices. However centrifugal pumps present a continuous flow and do not take into account the physiological demand of blood. The challenge is to develop a new control system for the blood pump with magnetic bearing to make it provide a pulsatile flow according to the physiology of the patient. Therefore this project proposal is to modify the rotational speed of the centrifugal blood pump to create a pulsatile flow to attend the needs of blood flow for the person with heart failure, using the patient's electrocardiogram, in real time, as feedback to the system.