Totally Implantable Artificial Lung

A totally implantable intrapleural artificial lung (AL) is presented. The AL is designed to fully spatients who require long term (more than one month) artificial gas exchange support necessary for tThe device will also provide a bridge to lung transplantation when lung recovery is impossible. Theperfused entirely by the right ventricle while the device is placed in series or in parallel with thpulmonary artery (PA) to PA, or PA to left atrium. MC3 has prototyped several extremely low resistanartificial lungs, and in collaboration with the University of Michigan, has successfully implanted tacute sheep experiments. In these experiments the AL was capable of fully supporting adult sheep whidrop across the device was tolerable by the right ventricle. Our objective in Phase I will be to furand to fully characterize the hemodynamics and gas exchange of devices that are made from silicone mmicroporous hollow fibers. This characterization will be helpful in determining how the various desiresistance to blood flow and gas exchange. Based on these results we will improve the design to advaat long term use.