Development of a Community-Engaged Dementia Education Program for the Houston Vietnamese American Community

While transplantation remained the most effective treatment for end-stage Congenital Heart Disease (CHD), it was an inaccessible solution for many pediatric patients due to the scarcity of compatible organs. As an alternative therapy to heart transplants, we created an intra-ventricular LVAD with a magnetic-levitated impeller to accommodate the specific physiological constraints of pediatric patients. The magnetic levitation (Maglev) system consisted of a Passive and an Active component. The Passive component featured permanent magnet rings on both the impellerï¾’s shaft and the motor casing to stabilize the impeller radially. Forces exerted on the rotor at precise axial and radial displacements were measured by fixing the rotor in place and varying the position of the motor casing along the X, Y, and Z directions. The radial stabilization process inadvertently produced an axial force to the front of the LVAD. This was counteracted with an induced magnetic force provided by the Active Maglev subsystem. The magnitude of the balancing induced force could be finetuned by analyzing the force-transducerï¾’s readings when current at varying strength ran through the magnetic coil. While smaller axial displacement would increase the risk of hemolysis, increasing the rotorï¾’s axial displacement would simultaneously increase the axial force and decrease the stabilized radial force, thus weakening the entire Maglev system. To resolve this dilemma, we operated our Maglev system at 2.5V and -2.5V. This resulted in a controllable axial displacement of 0.175 mm, which is 22 times the size of a red blood cell.