A new total heart design via implantable impeller pumps.

Hemolysis and thrombosis have been considered as the main limitations of the impeller pump and other centrifugal pumps to total heart applications. One of the solutions is to choose the impeller shroud and vane according to the stream surfaces of blood flow, so as to vanish the turbulence and stagnation which cause the hemolysis and thrombosis, respectively, in the pump. This paper describes the method of deducing the stream surfaces together with the velocity distributions in the impeller from the fundamental dynamical equations, and presents a prototype design of the impeller total heart which promises to be an ideal alternative to the problematic diaphragm total heart.