Chip Technology for Artificial Lungs
September 8, 2015 | Terry Sharrer
It was a tremendous technological achievement when, in 1953, Dr. John Gibbon kept a heart patient alive during surgery for 26 minutes, entirely dependent on the heart lung machine he had been developing for two decades. Ever since then, machines that exchanged blood carbon dioxide and oxygen have been both lifesaving and problematic. They can damage cells and cause clots. Engineers at the Draper Laboratory (Cambridge, MA) believe they have a state of the art improvement—a microfluidics chip of biocompatible polymer channels and an extracorporeal membrane to do the gas exchange. It improves cell handling and clotting risks, but so far the volume is low, even though proof of principle is demonstrated. MORE
Image Credit: Draper Lab and TechnologyReview.com