Implantable blood pump

Abstract

An implantable blood pump (10) for providing either continuous or pulsatile blood flow to the heart. The pump includes a stator (16) having a cylindrical opening (14), an annular array (36 or 38) of electromagnets (40, 42) carried by the stator concentric with the cylindrical opening and lying in a plane transverse to the axis (26) of the opening, a bearing (28) carried by the stator and extending across the cylindrical opening, and a rotor (12) supported by the bearing for rotation about the axis of the cylindrical opening, the rotor being in the form of an Archimedes screw and having a permanent magnet (48) in its periphery which lies in the same plane as the array of electromagnets. A controller (44) is provided which is capable of causing the array of electromagnets to be sequentially energized to cause the rotor to rotate. A heart beat sensing device (50) and a rotor speed sensing device (54) may be associated with the controller so the controller may vary the rotational speed of the rotor so that the output of the pump is varied between a high ouptut synchronized with a heart beat and a low output.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.