Medical Device Research

Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) is an effective treatment for end-stage heart failure patients. However, severe complications, including thrombosis, stroke, and bleeding, are common. Past studies have shown that the blood damage associated with the supraphysiologic shear stress in the device is the cause of those complications. The mechanical forces generated by the rotating components destroy blood cells, leading to hemolysis, and activate platelets, causing thrombus formation. It is crucial to optimize the LVAD design to achieve minimal blood damage. In this work, we first designed a parametric centrifugal LVAD model and built a computational framework to assess blood damage. Subsequently, preliminary design optimization was carried out. Results from different models have shown significant improvement in performance after optimization.