BIOMEDICAL FLUID MECHANICS

Heart-lung machines

Heart-lung machines are used to support patients during operations such as open-heart surgery. In addition Extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a therapy used to support patients suffering from respiratory or cardiac failure. Typically, blood is drawn from a femoral vein, oxygenated and pumped back into a femoral artery. Complications in patients un- dergoing this therapy occur frequently and some have a detrimental effect on mortality.

We search for flow related causes for complications, in particular acute-kidney injury (AKI), by developing theoretical and experimenta blood flow models in the human arterial system.