A right ventricular cardiac assist device

A good method of assisting the right ventricle of the heart has, up to the present, not been available. This paper presents a new approach to assisting the right ventricle of the heart which can be utilized independently or during cardiac surgery. Through implementation of this approach, and timed inflation and deflation of several types of balloon catheters in the pulmonary artery, distal pulmonary arterial flow is augmented with subsequent unloading of the right side of the heart. This approach, hopefully, will be of benefit in the treatment of atherosclerotic and congenital heart disease as well as in many cases of pulmonary hypertension.