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Every year, approximately 20 million people worldwide suffer from heart failure, nearly

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5 million of them in the U.S. alone.

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In many cases, a heart transplant is the best chance for survival, but unfortunately, only

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about 2,500 donor hearts are available each year, leaving many patients with little hope

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of survival.

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Until now.

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A unique device called the DeBakey Ventricular Assist Device, or VAD, is now able to prolong

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life until a suitable transplant heart is available.

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Based on the vision of Dr. Michael DeBakey and designed by NASA engineers, this device

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uses advanced flow technologies first used in the space shuttle to increase blood circulation

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for heart failure patients awaiting a transplant.

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I spoke with Jim Ackerman at NASA's Johnson Space Center to find out more.

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The assist device is a lot like a fan.

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You can imagine a fan and a little pipe, and it just sort of blows the blood along.

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Blood is a very fragile fluid, very unusual type thing to be pumping along, and there's

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been a lot of work for many years with plunger type pumps that are able to handle the fluid

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very tenderly, but they've all been big and not very practical.

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The key to this, blood has to flow fast through it, and of course that generates problems

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with turbulence and low pressure zones and blood damage, and it's just turned out to

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be a real challenge.

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Jim, how does the device work?

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The assist device essentially hooks to the left ventricle, and a small hose comes up

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and connects onto this end of the pump.

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The blood flows in here.

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These little blades sort of screw into the blood flow.

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It runs 10,000 revolutions a minute.

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The blood is rotating with the rotor, and then when it flows into the diffuser blades

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in the aft end of the pump, the blood's rotating motion is decelerated, discharged, and flows

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over into the descending aorta.

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So how did NASA become involved in a medical project?

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Well essentially, they got involved with DeBakey through one of his patients.

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Dr. DeBakey, of course, is a heart surgeon.

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In fact, he invented the first pump that was used to support the life of the person while

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they worked on the heart.

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DeBakey had been working on a blood pump for like 30 years, trying to get something that

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was practical and realistic, and I think he had essentially pretty much thrown in the

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towel almost, because it was such a challenge technically.

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And yes, if maybe somebody down at NASA would be interested in looking into it, we went

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over the requirements and it became obvious that a special kind of technology was going

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to be required.

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Because blood is the operating fluid for the VAD, the device must be designed to gently

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propel blood through the apparatus to minimize damage to the red blood cells.

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In order to accomplish this, NASA engineers designed the pumping device to avoid regions

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of high stress and separated flow inside the pump.

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They also designed the pump to properly wash out all of the blood from low flow regions

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inside the device, helping to prevent the formation of blood clots.

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These modifications were accomplished by using the same type of complex computational flow

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models developed to increase fuel efficiency inside the space shuttle engines.

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By using a computerized model of blood flow for the device, researchers were able to refine

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the VAD's problem areas, gain valuable insight into the blood flow process inside the device,

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and most importantly, help save lives.

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Jim, how long is this device designed to work?

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It's designed to run for at least 100 days, but we've already run it 110 days and no signs

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of any problem at all. As long as the bearings are still intact, it's still going to function.

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We can envision the thing almost indefinitely.

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The really exciting part of it all is that with the extra circulation this little unit

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provides, there's a large percentage of the patients that are recovering to the extent

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that they don't have to have a transplant. Actually, the heart itself recovers with good

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enough circulation. That's a real advantage to know that a lot of people that need the

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support will eventually not need a transplant. It's really a challenge, a fun kind of challenge

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that engineers really enjoy, and with the technology NASA has, we were able to solve the problem.