A newly designed cannula entrance in pulsatile pump—with special concideration about venous wall collapse

Abstract

When the blood is drawn from the cardiovascular tract into pulsatile pump, sufficient flow rate cannot often be attained, because the collapsible venous wall clings to the cannula entrance and the contraction of the flow path occurs. To avoid this contraction, we have designed a new cannula entrance which has the cage (made of stainless steel wire) with larger amount of area of side apertures. Using this newly designed cannula as the inlet of the piston-bellows type of artificial heart for dogs, we were able to attain sufficient flow rate (perfusion index: 2.2l·min^-1·m^-2) repeatedly.