A New Total Heart Design Via Implantable Impeller Pumps

Abstract

Hemolysis and thrombosis have been considered as the main limitations of the impeller pump and other centrifugal pumps to total heart ap plications. One of the solutions is to choose the impeller shroud and vane ac cording to the stream surfaces of blood flow, so as to vanish the turbulence and stagnation which cause the hemolysis and thrombosis, respectively, in the pump. This paper describes the method of deducing the stream surfaces to gether with the velocity distributions in the impeller from the fundamental dynamical equations, and presents a prototype design of the impeller total heart which promises to be an ideal alternative to the problematic diaphragm total heart.