Wireless Pump Could Prevent Surgical Complications in People Born With Serious Heart Defects

A new heart device in development could someday help people born with a serious heart defect.

Researchers from Penn State College of Medicine (Hershey, PA, USA) are designing a wireless pump that will act as the missing right ventricle in certain people born with heart defects. Some babies are born with only one functional ventricle due to congenital heart defects. Blood without oxygen normally returns to the heart to be transported to the lungs for oxygen via the right ventricle. However, in patients born with only one ventricle, surgeons perform a Fontan procedure, where de-oxygenated blood bypasses the heart and flows directly to the lungs to receive oxygen before returning to the heart to be pumped to the rest of the body by the single ventricle.

Image: Wireless pump for people born with heart defects. (Photo courtesy of Penn State College of Medicine)

Survival rates for babies who receive the Fontan procedure have improved over the past few decades, but as these patients age into young adults, they may experience serious complications that impact their quality of life including fluid retention, swelling, abnormal cardiac output and liver failure. Penn researchers are now working to develop a device that they hope will help prevent these complications and have received more than USD 4 million from the U.S. Army Research and Development Command to design the wireless pump. According to the researchers, heart transplantation is a poor option due to limited donor hearts and prior surgeries and blood transfusions that produce antibodies to donor tissue.

Although left ventricular assist devices are available for long term support in patients with left ventricular failure, there are currently no devices available for long term support or replacement of the right ventricle. According to the researchers, currently available pumps have electrical cables running through the skin, which is not ideal for long-term use and poses an infection risk. The team envisions a completely wireless system, based on a system they designed for pulsatile pumps that was successfully tested in patients. The team has completed the first phase of the project, which included engineering and designing the small pump.

Since blood is a unique liquid with special properties, they conducted a series of tests to see whether the device could move blood effectively and also how blood would interact with the surface of the pump, to avoid clotting or other health issues. While initial implants in animal studies showed good results for safety and efficacy, there’s still more work to be done, according to the researchers. The next phase of the project will focus on developing an implantable, wireless controller for the pump, which will require additional testing. Although it will be years before the device is ready for clinical testing in human subjects, the team remains optimistic about the progress.

“Finding long-term solutions for these patients is critical,” said William Weiss, Howard E. Morgan Professor of Surgery in the College of Medicine’s Division of Applied Biomedical Engineering, who is leading a project to develop the wireless pump. “We envision a device that essentially acts as the right ventricle and will pump blood to the lungs to receive oxygen and expel carbon dioxide.”

“If we’re successful, thousands of aging Fontan patients will have a new option that could last 10 years or longer,” Weiss added.

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Penn State College of Medicine