Multiscale Analysis of the interactions between a Novel Total Artificial Heart and the Native Cardiovascular System.

仅在英国，就有超过50万人患有心力衰竭，每年约有1.4万人入院，1万人死亡。对于那些患有严重终末期心力衰竭的患者来说，长期存活的唯一希望是心脏移植。然而，由于缺乏捐赠者的心脏，英国每年进行的心脏移植不到200例。因此，至关重要的是，有其他治疗方法可以延长患者的生命，直到找到捐赠者为止。一种这样的方法是用全人工心脏(TAH)完全取代天然心脏(TAH)斯堪的纳维亚真实心脏公司正在开发一种基于正容积泵概念的新型TAH。推测这种方法与传统的旋转泵法相比，在生理配伍方面有很大的优势。因此，这项研究将调查TAH和天然心血管系统之间的相互作用，评估该设备的生物兼容性，以帮助设计优化和监管批准。将进行具体分析的感兴趣的领域将是量化由于停滞或湍流而导致的TAH造成的血液损害的程度，以及由于泵送机制而造成的热影响。这将通过使用计算流体动力学(CFD)来模拟TAH内的血液流动，并使用有限元分析(FEA)来评估整个结构的热分布来实现。此外，还将通过建立内部数学模型来研究泵血周期产生的脉搏波及其对动脉系统的影响。这项研究的好处将有助于设计和开发一种新的解决方案，以解决可用的心脏捐赠者缺乏的问题，延长潜在数千人的寿命。这项研究还将通过勾勒生物不相容的区域来影响未来的人工心脏和医疗植入物的设计。

Over 500,000 people in the UK alone suffer from heart failure, with around 14,000 admitted to hospital each year and 10,000 deaths. For those patients with severe end-stage heart failure, the only hope of long-term survival is a heart transplant. However, fewer than 200 heart transplants are carried out each year in the UK due to a lack of donor hearts. It is vital therefore that alternative treatments are available to prolong the life of a patient until a donor can be found. One such method is the complete replacement of the native heart with a total artificial heart (TAH)Scandinavian Real Heart AB are developing a novel TAH based on the concept of positive displacement pumps. It is hypothesized that this approach, compared to the traditional rotary pumping method, has major advantages for physiological compatibility. This research will therefore investigate the interactions between the TAH and the native cardiovascular system, assessing the biocompatibility of the device to aid design optimisation and regulatory approval. The areas of interest that will undergo specific analysis will be quantifying the level of blood damage caused by the TAH due to stasis or turbulent flow and the thermal influence due to the pumping mechanism. This will be achieved through the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to simulate the blood flow within the TAH, and finite element analysis (FEA) to assess the thermal distribution throughout the structure. In addition, the pulse wave that is generated by the pumping cycle, and the effect on the arterial system will also be investigated through the creation of in-house mathematical models.The benefits of this research would be to aid the design and development of a novel solution to the lack of available heart donors, prolonging the life of potentially thousands of people. This research also will also influence future artificial heart and medical implant designs through the outlining of regions of bio-incompatibility.