Engineering development of permanent mechanical circulatory support systems

Development of mechanical circulatory support systems at Penn State began in 1972, about eight years into the coordinated national effort to develop mechanical replacements for the failing heart. Systems were developed in the 1970´s to provide temporary support for bridge to recovery, and later bridge to transplantation. These provided an invaluable service to patients, demonstrated the potential of the underlying technology, and provided valuable technical, medical and human lessons. We were well-positioned to apply these lessons to the design of fully implanted systems in the 1980´s when enabling technologies in microelectronics, materials and other areas became available. We have now developed, and used clinically, the completely implanted, intact-skin heart replacement systems that we envisioned at the start of our work. The engineering of these systems has involved concerns as disparate as mechanisms of blood clotting and formation of emboli to human interface design for devices that must be used comfortably by both medical professionals in the critical care setting and patients at home. This presentation will review the manner in which these systems were developed over three decades, highlighting lessons for the engineer regarding design of systems that will become part of the patient´s physiology and working with a large team of disparate medical, scientific and engineering disciplines.