Assembly of a Pulmonary Artery Pressure Sensor System

Abstract

This paper presents an implantable system for telemonitoring the intravascular pressure in the pulmonary artery. By implanting a catheter-bound pressure and temperature sensor into the pulmonary artery, it is possible to monitor the actual value and the time variations of the intravascular pressure with a frequency of 128 Hz. Thus hospitalization of patients suffering from heart insufficiency can be avoided by early changes in therapy.Preliminary in vivo experiments have been conducted to verify the fixation mechanism and the positioning of the sensor at the right place in the pulmonary artery. It was shown that the proposed fixation mechanism and the packaging of the sensor promise to be stable.