3D Flow Modeling and Blood Damage Characterization of the UltraMag™ Blood Pump

Cardiovascular and lung diseases are the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. There are many therapies available for their treatment such as simple lifestyle changes, medicines, and surgical intervention or corrections. For the cases where the above treatments do not alleviate the patients’ conditions, the use of artificial devices may be the only option to treat or replace the diseased organ(s). However, the consideration of blood containing biomedical devices may introduce a prolonged contact between the blood and inorganic surfaces which induces variety of blood damages including hemolysis due to the creation of non-physiological mechanical shear stress field. Hemolysis is the release of hemoglobin from the red blood cells (RBC) as a result of the rupture of RBC membrane due to these unavoidable mechanical effects. For that reason, characterization of fluid dynamics and hemolytic performance is the key step to evaluate the design of biomedical devices.