Magnetically Levitated Implantable Blood Pump

All rotary pumps approved for clinical use have some type of mechanical bearings and considerable design effort has been put into designing these bearings to reduce mechanical wear and to reduce hemolysis in pumps with mechanical bearings. Nonetheless, there are recently published reports of large trials of 2nd generation devices (rotary pumps using mechanical bearings) that show improved survival and decreased thromboembolic complications as compared with pulsatile devices. Unfortunately, several recent studies have associated increased incidence of hematological events with rotary pumps as compared to pulsatile pumps.

Our group is tasked with the design, development and testing of novel implantable blood pump that has an extremely simple and clean flow path and and impeller completely supported by magnetic bearings. Our team, including the Utah Artifical Heart Institute and collaborating physician from the Mayo Clinic, has been interested in the superiority of a single flow path axial flow magnetically levitated pump design for many years. Our pump, aka LEV-VAD, addresses this significant short-coming of existing devices by demonstrating a unique design that has an optimally simple flow path and ultra-low shear stresses (<40Pa), due to very large fluid gaps (500 um) everywhere between the impeller and housing. This idealized axial flow pump has a simple, unobstructed single blood flow path and novel hybrid magnetic bearings that overcome the strong axial forces on the impeller without compromising the idealized flow path.

We are happy to say that we've fabricated several functional prototypes and are currently performing chronic animal testing with the device sponsored by National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.