Thrombosis is a major and serious complication in patients with artificial heart pump assist device (HPAD). There is an urgent need for an efficient and safe method to solve the clinical challenge. We have developed a new type of ultrasound integrated heart pump assist device (uHPAD) with a pair of ultrasonic transducer rings installed around the pump. Based on the in-vitro experiments, the sonothrombolysis protocol was determined. Then, in-vivo experiments were performed on sheep to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the novel uHPAD. It is found that the ultrasound assisted thrombolysis with the drug-loaded microbubbles can accelerate the dissolution of the thrombus in the pump, while have no significant negative effect on blood cell components, coagulation-hemolysis system, and the structure and function of main organs. The ultrasound assisted thrombolysis is demonstrated to be a promising method to solve the clinical problem of thrombosis in the HPAD.
Paper presents a fluidic device developed for generation of small (less than 1 mm in diameter) microbubbles in a liquid from gas passing gas through small passages. Until now the bubbles are larger than the size of aerator passage exits so that making the passages smaller did not result in obtaining the desirable microbubbles. Analysis of high-speed camera images (obtained with a special lens of large working distance) have shown show that the large bubble size is caused by slow ascent motion of very small bubbles so that they get into mutual contact and grow by conjunction. The solution is to pulsate the supplied gas flow by a no-moving-part fluidic oscillator. The gener-ated small bubble is moved back into the aerator passage where it is for a part of oscillation period protected from the conjunction with other, previously generated microbubbles.
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