Design and drive control of novel pulsatile-flow left ventricular assist device

Abstract

In recent years, there are lots of heart diseases and some of these, e.g. congestive heart failure, can not only make heartbeat slowly, but also can cause the heart to pump blood powerlessly. In order to solve the problems, ventricular assist devices (VADs) had been proposed [1, 2]. They could help hearts to pump blood powerfully around human body, and mitigate uncomfortableness of hearts. Currently, two types of VADs have been widely used in biomedical market; one is pulsatile-flow ventricular assist device (PVAD), and the other is continuous-flow ventricular assist device (CVAD). Many researchers presented to compare the effect of the PVAD and the CVAD, and the PVAD associated with a better peripheral vascular reactivity than CVAD [3]. Additionally, intra-aortic balloon pumps were widely adopted in clinic and they are one kind of the PVADs; however, they were no significantly beneficial effect to those who had heart failure disease when aortic pressure below 60 mmHg [4]. Therefore, design and drive control of novel pulsatile-flow left ventricular assist device (PLVADs) are presented in this study to assist patients who had heart diseases.