PROSTHESIS-INDUCED HEMOLYSIS - MECHANISMS AND QUANTIFICATION OF SHEAR-STRESS

Over the past four decades, nearly three million prosthetic heart valv es have been implanted worldwide. Despite improvements in valve design s and clinical management, the ideal mechanical heart valve has yet to be realized; hemolytic and thromboembolic complications remain the ma jor obstacles. Towards this goal, a number of clinical and basic engin eering studies have improved our understanding of how red blood cells can be damaged by the turbulent flow fields associated with current pr osthetic mechanical heart valve designs. However, continued advances i n understanding the hemolytic complications associated with different valve designs, and progress in making improvements to existing designs , will depend on the development of more sophisticated in vitro quanti tative engineering techniques such as those described in this paper.