Low-Resistance, Concentric-Gated Pediatric Artificial Lung for End-Stage Lung Failure.

Abstract

Children with end-stage lung failure awaiting lung transplant would benefit from improvements in artificial lung technology allowing for wearable pulmonary support as a bridge-to-transplant therapy. In this work, we designed, fabricated, and tested the Pediatric MLung-a dual-inlet hollow fiber artificial lung based on concentric gating, which has a rated flow of 1 L/min, and a pressure drop of 25 mm Hg at rated flow. This device and future iterations of the current design are designed to relieve pulmonary arterial hypertension, provide pulmonary support, reduce ventilator-associated injury, and allow for more effective therapy of patients with end-stage lung disease, including bridge-to-transplant treatment.