Investigation of Blood Hemolysis Study in Rotary Blood Pump between Continuous Flow and Pulsatile Flow

Rotary blood pumps were used widely for medical treatment. Ventricular assist device (VAD) is one of the devices which based on rotary blood pump technology. Bridge to recovery (BTR) process is one of the treatment methods. VAD normally generate continuous blood flow. Latest report said that the pulsatile flow is better in blood vessel properties maintaining. However, VAD should not generated high shear stress that will cause the thrombosis. The objective of this study is to compare the hemolysis occur in rotary blood pump during constant speed and pulsatile speed. This study uses MOCK Circulation Loop to simulate the body circulatory system. The continuous flow and pulsatile flow will be compared. The rotary blood pump will be run at 1500 rpm constant speed and 1250-1750rpm, 1000-2000 rpm pulsatile speed at 60 beat per minute. The system was operated for 6 hours. The blood was obtained 1.5 milliliter from the loop every hour. The modified index of hemolysis (MIH) and plasma-free hemoglobin of each speed conditions were compared. The result shown that plasma-free hemoglobin levels in all speed condition increased with the duration of experiment. The MIH shown non significantly difference when the amplitude of pulsatile speed was increase. This experiment was preliminary study. In future work, the computational fluid dynamic software will use to simulated the phenomena inside the rotary blood pump and used for experiment compared.