Abstract
An intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) is an effective device for supporting the circulation in the event of acute heart failure. Small IABP devices are strongly needed in medical related fields. The authors have been investigated an IABP device using a linear pulse motor (LPM) in order to actualize a small IABP device to reduce the load of the nurses. This paper discusses the characteristics of the LPM developed by the authors for the IABP drive, and performance evaluation of an LPM-driven IABP.
Our investigation revealed as follows; (1) The trial LPM had the volume of 1.3 liters and the mass of 6.3kg. It is capable of reduction the weight of the IABP device. (2) The LPM had a high thrust/volume ratio of 0.88 newtons/mL. (3) The driving characteristics of the LPM-driven IABP was evaluated by means of a mock testing device. The volume of operating balloon was measured with the electrical resistance between two electrodes. The maximum pumping rate of the IABP device was approximately 160 beats/min. The LPM-driven IABP will be possible to apply clinical study as small-sized device from the result of experiment.
