Ventricular Assist Devices
Ventricular assist devices (VADs) are implantable blood pumps required by patients with severe heart failure to survive due to the constant worldwide sever donor heart shortage. In the external page Zurich Heart project, 17 groups from ETH, University and University Medicine Zurich tackle these problems by either improving existing VADs or by exploring entirely new device designs. Current generation VADs can not adjust their pumping speed to the constantly changing needs of the human body, which can lead to severe complications for the patient.
Modern control systems are capable of autonomously adjusting the pump speed, but lack an accurate, precise, and stable input signal. The implementation of pressure measurement into the inflow cannula of a VAD promises to provide such a signal but the biological environment requires an intricate biocompatible encapsulation of the sensor.
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