New Invention: “Permanent” Total Artificial Heart

An inventor from Turkey presented at the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva 2014 the invention: “Permanent” Total Artificial Heart”.

This invention is about “permanent” total heart device which has been developed for patients who have end-stage heart failure and who are considered for heart transplantation. Via a surgical operation, the device is placed whether completely inside the ventricles of the patients’ heart or it is placed to the convenient space obtained through removing part of the ventricles. The specially designed motor requires quite a little energy and works simultaneously with ECG signals assuring pulsatile blood flow.

It is often difficult to find suitable heart donors for patients with en-stage heart failure. Therefore, the development of total artificial heart devices is often the only choice. With the development of these devices, it seems that the heart transplantation will not be needed and instead bionic hearts will be used.

The invented artificial heart devices placed into the intra ventricular of the hart with a surgical operation. During the operation, other regions of the heart such as atriums, aortic and pulmonary valves and heart conduction system which is consists of sinoatrial node, atrioventricular node and conduction pathways are not touched. Therefore, sinoatrial node continue to produce electrical impulse (action potentials) which triggers cardiac contraction and ECG signals are normally produced by the heart tissue. The artificial heart device is triggered by the detected ECG signal and provides pulsatile blood flow by start-stop motion. In other words, the artificial heart device is not controlled by its own microprocessor but it is controlled by the patients’ sinoatrial node. Therefore, the patient will continue his life with his own heart’s natural sinus rhythm, i.e. when the patient makes effort, his heart rhythm will accelerate, when takes a rest, it will slow down.

The motor of the artificial heart device is of type brushless and it contains rotors rotating on a magnetic bearing with no shafts. The motor is whether synchronous or asynchronous and is based on the direct drive technology. The direct drive technology seems to provide the most apparent advantage of the invention over existing artificial heart devices. Inside the rotors there are spiral impellers which are integrated with rotor and which have no axis angle. Pulsatile blood flow is provided via these specially designed impellers. Moreover the device contains a wireless energy transfer (simultaneously 3-phase AC current) system. Using this system, the energy of the device is provided outside the body by wireless transfer. The system offer patients higher quality of life. Maybe with the development of this artificial heart device, heart transplantation will no longer be needed. 

The inventor is interested in commercialization of this invention and is seeking appropriate interested manufacturer. European Patent Registration and Consulting Services GmbH has made direct contact with the inventor and has access to information about the invention directly from the inventor. Interested parties for the invention can contact European Patent Registration at epo@epo-prs.de.