Development of a functional ex-vivo porcine heart system to test and improve heart valve repairing techniques*

Fully functional heart valves are integral to a healthy heart. Defective valves cause regurgitation, decreased cardiac output, and heart failure. Developing improved methods of heart valve repair typically involves performing the procedure on a pig in vivo, as pigs’ hearts are anatomically and physiologically very similar to humans’. However, a porcine ex vivo heart model can provide a reliable intermediate step before in vivo procedures to save resources on initial testing. In this study, the ex vivo left heart model is designed, developed, and analyzed to test its ability to emulate an in vivo beating heart for surgical testing. A pulsatile pump was connected to an explanted porcine heart to mimic the physiological beating of the heart, and saline solution was pumped through the heart to mimic blood flow. Damage was induced on the heart valves. Hemodynamic parameters such as cardiac output and ventricular pressure were measured with flow and pressure sensors before damage, after damage, and after surgical repair to assess the model’s accuracy and the repair’s effectiveness.