For people born with a single ventricle heart, options are scarce. They must either undergo a palliative series of open heart surgeries, ending with the Fontan , or receive a heart transplant. As the first Fontan patients reach adulthoo emerging data suggests that all Fontans will eventually fail.
NASA Glenn Technology Pumps Hope into Broken Hearts. Mark Rodefeld knows the hearts of children. To support the development of a Fontan mechanical circulatory support device to assist with the treatment of.
Although a Fontan circulation is lifesaving, it has inherent inefficiencies that will eventually lead to circulatory failure. Our work has focused over the past years to replace the missing power source and restore the Fontan circulation to a more efficient 2-ventricle circulation. To do this requires placing a blood pump into the. The chamber may be too small, underdevelope or missing a valve. These are some of the most critical and life-threatening congenital heart disease (CHD) . So Rodefeld came up with an idea to insert a small conical pump , driven by an electrical motor, into an existing Fontan network.
This pump would reproduce the pressures and flow coming from the body and hea reducing the wear and tear on the single remaining ventricle and extend the life of the patient. Continue reading “Pump fontän”