Hemodynamic model for surgical extracorporeal circulation

Extracorporeal circulation (ECC), a technique that substitutes for the pulmonary and cardiac functions of a patient during open heart surgery, is discussed. Closed-loop control of ECC prevents some of the risks attached to the use of this technique. Conceptually, the ECC-device/patient system can be separated into hemodynamic, biochemical, thermodynamic and pharmacodynamic subsystems. Previous efforts to automate the control of the hemodynamic subsystem concerned the regulation of only one variable. No explicit plant model was used in these approaches. The author presents a multivariable simulation model for the ECC hemodynamics