A Multiscale Computational Platform in the Design of a Geometrically Tunable Blood Shunt
Friday, March 13, 2020
10:30 AM-12:30 PM
BIOMED PhD Research Proposal
Title:
A Multiscale Computational Platform in the Design of a Geometrically Tunable Blood Shunt for Norwood Recipients
Speaker:
Ellen Garven, PhD Candidate
School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems
Drexel University
Advisor:
Amy Throckmorton, PhD
Associate Professor
School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems
Drexel University
Details:
Infants born with single ventricle heart defects require palliative cardiac surgery shortly after birth. These defects are present in every 2 to 4 infants per 10,000 live births and are quickly fatal without treatment. The Norwood procedure is the riskiest of several surgeries used to treat single ventricle infants. During this procedure, an artificial shunt is implanted and allows the single functional ventricle to perform the work of two ventricles. In recent years, the mortality rates associated with the Norwood procedure have stagnated, reflecting an unmet clinical need.
The clinical stability of the infant depends on sufficient blood delivery through the shunt. However, the shunt remains in place for approximately six months, during which time the infant should experience a significant period of growth. As a result of those physiological changes, a fixed design theoretically cannot provide an ideal amount of blood through the shunt over the entire period of use. These limitations have inspired the research of the BioCirc Lab; our long-term goal is to design a geometrically tunable hydrogel-based shunt. This shunt will address the limitations of the current design by expanding in inner diameter in proportion to growth and development. Our overarching hypothesis is that the geometrically tunable shunt will allow for better control over the blood oxygenation of the infant, thereby creating more hemodynamically favorable conditions.
In support of the development of a tunable shunt, this research proposal focuses on how the inner diameter of the shunt should change in order to maintain hemodynamics at a reasonable level during infancy. First, we must characterize the hemodynamic changes during a Norwood recipient's growth based on clinical data. We plan to build and validate generalized models of changes in key hemodynamic variables over the duration of shunt use. A computational framework of the Norwood circulation will model the anatomical and physiological changes and observe their impact on the hemodynamics. This effort will aid in the design of a safe and effective device, provide evidence for its potential positive clinical impact, and create a platform from which future studies could be conducted, including patient-specific modeling, disease-specific modeling, and surgical planning.
Contact Information
Ken Barbee
215-895-1335
barbee@drexel.edu