Thesis
New protective stent for intravenous Fontan blood pump
Master of Science (M.S.), Drexel University
Jun 2019
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/gmnt-4446
Abstract
Thousands of infants are born every year with cardiac defects leaving them with only one functioning ventricle. As a result of these defects, these infants undergo strenuous palliative procedures to create what is known as a Fontan physiology and still are left facing numerous complications including congestive heart failure, thrombosis, arrhythmias and more. Treatment and management costs for these Fontan patients exceeds $1 billion every year, and the available donor supply is too small to be considered a feasible solution. The available blood pumps and ventricular assist devices, while they have been implemented successfully in some cases, were not specifically designed for these single ventricle patients and thus have several shortcomings. The size of these pumps in addition to rigid design leads to irregular flow dynamics, insufficient performance and blood damage. It is suggested that only 1-5 mmHg would be sufficient to alleviate the many complications associated with single ventricle physiology, making a purposely designed blood pump a viable solution as a bridge therapy to heart transplantation. Using computational means and experimental testing, this study investigated the use of a minimally invasive axial flow blood pump with a cage and impeller to support the Fontan physiology until a donor heart becomes available. Prior research focused on cage filament direction and impeller angle separately, making the focus of this thesis determining an optimal combination of cage and impeller design. Design geometries were rapid prototyped to be experimentally tested and Solidworks models were used in ANSYS CFX to run computational simulations. Geometries varied in the number of filaments, cross-sectional shape of the filament and the impeller blade angle of twist. Pressure generation, capacity range, estimated shear stresses and blood damage levels were examined. Both the simulations and experiments demonstrated that the new cage designs were within the desired pressure rise and hemodynamic ranges, but qualitatively some designs were able to outperform others. A resulting combination of the 5-filament cage design with the 350°impeller angle was determined as optimal, thus furthering the support in the development of an axial flow blood pump for a failing Fontan physiology.
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Details
- Title
- New protective stent for intravenous Fontan blood pump
- Creators
- Emma Stenger - DU
- Contributors
- Amy Throckmorton (Advisor) - Drexel University (1970-)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Master of Science (M.S.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- x, 61 pages
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Health Systems (1997-2026); Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 9415; 991014632515004721