Year: 2014-15

Company: Edwards Lifesciences

Liaison(s): Andrew Barajas Alex Holland

Edwards Lifesciences is the global leader in the
science of heart valves and hemodynamic monitoring.
Edwards Lifesciences technologies strive to address
a large and growing patient population with
unmet clinical needs. Monitoring structural heart
disease and advanced monitoring in critical care
medicine represent key critical clinical needs in the
cardiovascular medical technology market. Since 1970,
the Edwards Lifesciences Swan-Ganz thermodilution
catheter has been the gold-standard technique for
monitoring continuous cardiac output as well as other
hemodynamic parameters such as pulmonary artery
pressure, and oxygen saturation (SvO2).
Current thermodilution measurement methods used
to measure continuous cardiac output use electrical
heating concepts that have shown to have several
disadvantages including: patient safety, effectiveness,
device cost, high power consumption, and a variety of
engineering challenges. The Edwards TMP has been
asked to investigate a new method of thermodilution
that could realize radical improvements to current
thermodilution measurement technology.
The team conducted a full feasibility study for a new
method of continuous cardiac output measurement
using optical heating methods, including research and
literature review into the topics of hemodynamics,
thermodilution, optics and laser technology. The
TMP team outlines key parameters and protocols
for initial proof-of-concept experiments. The TMP
collected and analyze the experimental data to
demonstrate the feasibility optical heating of whole
blood. The TMP submitted a report summarizing the
(1) scientific background; (2) design of the proof-ofprinciple
experiment; (3) recommendations for future
development.