Clayton K. Purdy Anthony J. Damon Keyu B. Vadaliya Arka Das Eduardo Divo
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Single ventricle anatomy (SV) is a congenial anomaly present in about 8% of all newborns with a Congenital Heart Defect (CHD). To survive, eligible children must undergo three palliative surgeries tha..
Single ventricle anatomy (SV) is a congenial anomaly present in about 8% of all newborns with a Congenital Heart Defect (CHD). To survive, eligible children must undergo three palliative surgeries that eventually establish a viable SV physiology. The third stage of this treatment is the Fontan procedure. Despite positive outcomes over the years, the Fontan circulation still presents survival rates of less than 50%. A prevalent mode of failure occurs when patients display increased inferior vena cava pressure A novel alternative called “self-powered Fontan” is proposed by creating a bifurcating graft, or Injection Jet Shunt (IJS), to "entrain" the pulmonary flow and thus provide assistance while reducing the caval pressure. Given the complete absence of any reference for such an implementation, a realistic in-vitro model embedded with the autoregulatory systemic response is developed to cross-validate the in-silico observations. The benchtop study involves a mock flow loop (MFL) which incorporates patient generic IJS assisted Fontan phantoms. The MFL replicates a reduced lumped parameter model (LPM) of the Fontan circulation, partitioned in upper- and lower-systemic and left- and right-pulmonary compartments. Each compartment of the LPM is modeled with a three-element windkessel segment to retain physiological accuracy and fidelity. The automated “Hardware-in-the-Loop” HIL-based MFL is driven by catheter tracings of patient data using an automated Harvard Apparatus medical pump.