Rotacor: a new rotary blood pump.
A new rotary blood pump was tested in calves for 6 hr. The pump consists of a rigid housing with a trochoidal internal surface, an inlet and outlet, and two lateral walls. A two-corner piston rotates on an eccentric shaft in a trochoidal path, thus creating a gap seal. The pump is driven by a water-cooled DC motor. For right ventricular assist, a cannula was inserted into the right ventricle through the right atrium, and into the left ventricle for left ventricular assist. From a total of 10 experiments, two left ventricular assists, two right ventricular assists, and three biventricular assists were evaluated. The pump produced a pulsatile flow of 3 L at 70 rpm. Energy requirements were 2.19 watts for left, 2.06 for right, and 7.26 for biventricular assists. Plasma hemoglobin remained as low as 10 mg/dl during monoventricular, and increased during biventricular assists to 20 mg/dl after 3 hr, when it started to chop again; after 6 hr it was 16 mg/dl. From these preliminary results it is concluded that this new type of blood pump may be suitable as a circulatory assist device.
Margreiter
R
R
Department of Transplant Surgery, University Hospital, Innsbruck, Austria.
Schwab
W
W
Klima
G
G
Koller
J
J
Baum
M
M
Dietrich
H
H
Hager
J
J
Königsrainer
A
A
D000818:Animals; D002417:Cattle; D011211:Electric Power Supplies; D004867:Equipment Design; D006354:Heart, Artificial; D006353:Heart-Assist Devices; D006439:Hemodynamics / Q000502:physiology*; D011673:Pulsatile Flow