Development of a Novel Blalock–Taussig Shunt Device Capable of Flow Regulation

The Blalock-Taussing shunt (BTS) operation is a cornerstone as initial palliative surgery for congenitial heart disease with severely reduced pulmonary blood flow. But BTS is difficult to manage the postoperative blood flow rate. The pourpose of this study is to develop a novel artificial blood vessel device capable of controlling bypass blood flow by BTS. Pressure loss by shunt was measured and estimated by using theory of fluid engineering. As the result, our proposed estimating method, which was including not only viscus friction loss but also pressure loss caused by flow separation, showed good agreement with experimental measured data.