A hydraulic figure-of-merit for heart valve prostheses

✍ Scribed by Viggers, Robert F. ;Robel, Stephen B. ;Sauvage, Lester R.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1967
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 470 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-9304
• DOI: 10.1002/jbm.820010111

✦ Synopsis

The pressure losses in the currently available prostheses are too high. We believe ail excellent way to focus designers' att,ention upon this fact is to rank the various designs according to their hydraulic efficiency. The proposal of this paper is for pressure drop vs. velocity data (pulsatile flow) to be taken similar to that of Figure 2, so that a pressure loss coefficient, K,, based upon the valve lumen area can be found for each valve design; further, that this K , be used to compare and rank the various valve designs. The fact that K , is a dynamic loss coefficient guides designers toward its improvement, for this compares the prosthesis problem to many "solved" problems (propeller blade profiles, hydrofoil profiles, etc.) which are similar hydraulically. The confusion of t,he surgeon when confronted wilh conflicting claims regarding various prostheses would be largely eliminated by acceptance of K , as a figure of hydraulic merit by those concerned with this aspect of biomedical engineering.